Stephen Byrne
In a moment, you’ll find a 9-minute video for you to watch because it’s always useful to see how other glass painters do their work.
Here you see how we work with oil on top of unfired water-based glass paint.
This gets us the kind of ancient-looking glass which our client asked for.
All in just one firing.
When I restore a broken piece of painted glass – restore it: so I mean when I “re-paint” it, not glue it, which I call “conservation” – there’s a big mistake I almost always make.
I say “almost”. Really though I should say “a mistake I always make – and then, just in time, I catch myself, start again, and do things properly”, thank goodness.
I want to tell you more. I want to – confess. But not just because my full confession may help you. (I can’t pretend I’m quite so selfless.) No, if I’m honest with myself, I’m fed up with this mistake I always make. It will be wonderful if, the next time I restore a broken piece of painted glass, I avoid this foolish error and get things right immediately.
So maybe – maybe! – by setting this down before your eyes, I’ll help myself.
This past week I’ve exchanged daily e-mails with a writer who is investigating how English stained glass painting was done mid-17th century.
First up, we talked about the old names for different sizes of tracing brush. None of this ‘size 0’ or 2 or 4 and so on. Rather: crow, duck, goose and swan. These were taken from the names of the birds whose quills were used to hold the hairs together. That was the old-fashioned way: much nicer than numbers, don’t you think? We also talked about this.
In my last post I gave you 9 tips for keeping a steady hand when tracing, or – “How to stop the wobbles“.
The last tip was, not too much wine. (Well, none at all is best.) Which reminds me how David’s been teetotal for 30 years. Not a single drop. Thankfully, that’s not the secret of his amazing skill, though as I say, you’ll definitely paint better when you’re “dry”.
No, other things also count – like your painting bridge and how you treat it.