Stained Glass Design and Glass Painting Techniques
Bless her, she’d been asked to write an article for next February’s Homes & Gardens (and she’d rung us five months early because she knew how busy we get …):
“I’m writing about buying and using stained glass and I’ve been looking at your website with great interest …
(What a lovely journalist, I thought.)
… I need to find out about the various options available to buy, and also who can restore them …
… Can you help me please?”
The light was heavenly here the other day – just as David was working on a water-colour design in our stained glass Studio #2 …
In Glass Painting Techniques & Secrets from an English Stained Glass Studio, you discover an amazing technique for painting with oil-based stained glass paint on top of unfired – note this: unfired – water-based paint. If this technique is new to you, read more here.
This is the exact technique we use each day to achieve a particular sense of depth and contrast in our work.
That’s the point about the information you get from us: it’s all tried and tested to the limit.
Sure, there’s always more to learn.
But what you learn with us is excellent and true.
Now this particular technique involves oil and brush.
Stained glass fighting bird in oil with nib
But have a look at this sample piece of painted stained glass.
This is the very piece which caught Penny’s eye when she took time off from the front-line of our National Health Service – leaving the nation at the mercy of Swine Flu – while she spent a weekend with us at Stanton Lacy.
And what a stained glass painting course that was!
A time when people meet each other and immediately know that they will meet again.
Penny wanted to know how the piece was made, so here’s precisely what you all need to know.
It’s not done with oil and brush, but with oil and nib.
Here’s how we painted it.
Sue Sills wrote and asked us about mixing glass paint with white vinegar:
“I have only used water and gum for mixing tracing paint so far.
But I was recently told that you can use white vinegar instead of water and that it stopped the paint from drying out so quickly, thus making it better for tracing lines.
Do you know if this is so?”
Here’s a check-list for anyone who’s starting out as a stained glass painter:
"Why has it taken so long to finish me?"
Careful readers will see that “The Hereford Saga” has been silent for some months.
Yes, our work on completing the full-sized design was mysteriously stopped by some factor (or factors) beyond and outside of our control!
But readers will be glad to know that we have recently been able to re-start our work.
And right now, the full-sized water-coloured design is nearly complete.
That means we will soon be able to make the cut-lines and then start cutting and painting the glass itself.
At last!
So to celebrate – here, therefore, is the first-ever Williams & Byrne Competition …
You’ll definitely want to know that the very first Williams & Byrne competition starts on …
"Let's party!"
Yes, a “year” simply measures the time it takes for a planet to orbit the Sun.
So, if the period of three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days isn’t emotionally significant in itself, then nothing significant can be created just by multiplying this period by 10.
And yet …
Anniversaries are important.
"Not the BBC again!?!"
What a headline! And it’s all true.
Here’s what happened …
David and I were working away, minding our own business, and finishing off the fourth set of brand-new windows that we’ve been making for a mansion on the shores of Lake Geneva, when the phone rang.
Yes, we’re men. Yes, we climb up scaffolding as nimbly as gazelles. But we’re also Sensitive Souls.
We don’t just design and make huge sets of stained glass windows for a sprawling 18th century mansion on the shores of Lake Geneva.
We also paint the small, delicate and lovely things in Life.
And, with Valentine’s Day fast approaching, we thought we’d reveal our gentler side …
