The anatomy of painting on stained glass is as follows: the color is in the glass and line and shadow is defined by paint usually brown or black. The line work is referred to as the tracing and the shading is termed matting. There are a staggering number of variations of Brown and Black.
None of which are ever quit right when trying to match paint color of an existing window.
Because this window is a line for line copy I quite literally trace all the line work. I lay the printout on the light table and put each piece of glass over it’s printed image and paint what is there. This is a luxury I am almost never afforded, usually I’m working off a enlargement of a watercolor painting that has only the most general information to guide me. On this project my guidance is humbling. I’ve been doing this long enough to call myself a good painter, but next to the hand that created this window originally I suck like an Electrolux.
Tracing over the printout
The trick in tracing is to find the calligraphy of each line, the last thing I want is for this to look traced from something even though that is exactly what I’ve done.
Finished tracing.
The paint we use is very much like ceramic glaze, it is made up of ground glass, flux and a mineral or metal oxide pigment. Metal oxide = rust. After decades of blasting buffing and sanding rust off motorcycle parts the irony of my need for this corrupted metal is rich indeed.
The paint can be scratched or brushed off until it has been fired in kiln. When fired, the paint fuses to the surface of the glass and becomes as permanent as anything in this life.
We get the paint in a powered form that can be mixed with any number of mediums. I’m using Venice turpentine, an oil medium that will allow me to brush a water matt over the tracing without disturbing it.
The original window has a greenish tint to the line work, so I’m using a paint called matting grey green that has a similar hew. I will be matting the glass in Ancient Brown Drakenfeld. Boy, is that arcane information or what.
Paint color I need to match.
Traced section down and waxed to plate glass.
Close up.
The last week has been spent hunched over the light table. Tony has been painting a window I designed at the next light table. I torture him with NPR but his smart ass rejoinders to the radio entertain the heck out me and thus ensures that the talk and news shows will continue. News of Eliot Spitzer’s political implosion dominates every show. Tony notices that most of the women commentators focus on why he had the affair. Most of the male commentator focus how he got caught.
Melissa finishes the inscription she’s been working on for the last two weeks and I immediately shanghai her to paint the canopy (the architectural gingerbread that surrounds gothic designs) of my window.
I’ve managed to get almost the entire window traced by Friday. My bosses relief is palpable even though theoretically we still do not have enough time to complete this window and install it.
Dove section laid out.
Hell, I’m not even to the hard part yet.
My splitting headache.