Stained Glass Painting – General Stained Glass Painting Questions

Here’s where you can post your general questions about stained glass painting.

For other questions, please see here:

• Mixing Paint
• Silhouetting
• Tracing
• Shading
• Painting with Oil
• Firing

Note this: please check our e-book first.

Stained Glass Painting Brushes

Doris C., from New York, US, writes and asks us about the kinds of brushes that we use for stained glass painting.

Here’s our list to get you started.

• Wide narrow brushes for undercoats and overcoats
• Blenders which are mostly used to move wet paint around on the glass
• Tracing brushes of various thicknesses for different kinds of line
• Scrubs and stipplers to make highlights and texture

You’ll find pictures and explanations right here.

You can also download a guide to basic tools and materials from here.

If you want to win some of the brushes that we use, then enter our competition here.

Tracing Brushes

Short-tipped pointed tracing brushes

We’re often asked about the length of the hairs on our tracing brushes.

Somehow the myth has got around that real stained glass tracing brushes have enormously long tips.

Some brush-makers have even developed a range of “stained glass painting brushes” whose tips are 1.5 inches long (or more).

The plain truth is, long tipped tracing brushes are hard to use.

We only use them when we have to trace very, very long thin lines – say lines which are 18 inches long, and we want to do this in one go.

Other times we use tracing brushes whose tips are a bit less than 1 inch long.

These come in various sizes from small to large. “Small” ones make a fine stroke, large ones make a broad stroke.

Their hairs are made from sable.

For most tracing, you need fine sable brushes whose tips end in a point – exactly the same kind of sable brushes as a water-color painter would use.

Make sure you get high quality brushes.

Wide Narrow Brushes (Also Known As “Hakes”)

Excellent for undercoats and for softening traced lines

Jackie C., from Malvern, England, writes and asks about the make of our wide narrow brushes She says:

“I’m having trouble finding decent hakes. I’ve bought several from local art shops. Some were dirt cheap, and others were not-so-cheap, but they all shed hairs all over the place. Where do you get yours from, pray?”

Let’s start by saying how we use the wide narrow brushes.

Their first use is to paint an undercoat. This is something we cover in Part 2 of our e-book. Their second use is to transform traced lines into shadows. This is something we cover in Part 3 of our e-book.

The best brushes we’ve ever found for both these jobs are called hakes (or sometimes haiks).

Now of course there are many different kinds of hakes. Our hakes are part of the “Ron Ronson” series. They are made by Pro Arte. We use the “large” size. Their item number is 50686452.

These Ron Ronson hake brushes are also used by water-color painters.

So you can ask your local art shop to place an order for you, or you can go online and find a supplier on the internet.

Gold

Becky D., from Stoke-on-Trent, England, asks about gold paint:

“I am currently painting an art nouveau style lady for a centre insert into a leaded light. I’m mainly using antique browns and silver stain, possibly with some coloured enamel details for jewels. Now the customer has asked if it is possible to use gold on the headpeice. Do you know if gold paint is available anywhere? (I can only find hobby paint, and I don’t wish to use that.)”

The answer may be lusters (or lustres). You can use metallic lusters to give your glass the appearance of an object of gold, silver or copper. You can find out about Reusche’s range of lusters right here. (See page 11.)

Lusters are applied and then fired. So a different approach is to use gold leaf, which doesn’t need firing. That’s how we re-created this glass in the servants’ quarters of an English country house.

"Where's my blasted gin and tonic?"

(The owners pulled cords, whatever room they were in. Down in the servants’ quarters, the appropriate square would flash. And off the servant would dash. Ah, those were the days!)

Our facsimile is protected by a piece of glass at the front of the box. This is just as well because gold leaf, even with lacquer on top, can easily be scratched. Lusters, however, are permanently fixed by firing.