WarmGlass.com

I'm back from a one week glass painting class with Kathy Jordan and Ken Leap. The focus of the class is on materials and methods more closely associated with stained glass than with warmglass techniques. But both Kathy and Ken are familiar with fusing techniques and they seem interested in tailoring the instruction to a focus useful to the individual student. I'm posting about it here because it occurred to me how much a lot of people on this board would be liberated if they developed a little confidence with traditional glasspainting brushwork, particularly the tracing line. It drives me crazy to read all the angst on here over little motorized machines and wierd sifter things to effect a dark black line on your work. Take a glasspainting course. This is the best I've taken so far. I uploaded some pictures to Flickr of it. Thanks for looking.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53221086@N ... 022310544/

I heartily second Don's suggestion. You don't have to be Picasso to utilize these basic techniques. Although if you are a super talented artist, they are also great.

My introduction to warm glass was exactly these techniques as taught by Helmut Schardt, and the late great Albinus Elskus. I may work very differently today, but the foundation I got was invaluable.

My first big lesson was that you can use any brush or device to get paint on to the glass. Yes there are specialized brushes for getting exact looks. However you can use a broad variety of tools from your fingers, to crumpled paper, to expensive badger hair or sable brushes. That said, I am so glad I have some long haired sable tracing brushes (sign painters brushes) and a couple of badger blenders. These are the most basic esoteric tools used in the trade. I always keep my eyes open for brushes I think I can utilize.

Painting is fun...

I would LOVE to take a glass painting class. I have rack full of enamels and paints, and most of my attempts at using them leave me very sad . ( ) I took a "make this stupid little bluebird" class at the Expo last year, but we really didn't learn much technique (great opportunity for the instructor to sell his "kits", however).

It does look like everyone in that class was an artist. Lovely work.

Dana W.

Well, you certainly found the BEST glass painters I know to study with, Don! I'm sure the class was more than wonderful. Vitrum Studio loves Ken and Kathy.

Good tip Don, some of those glass paintings are awesome.Can this sort of work hold up to a multi layer piece to form a block of glass, say four to six inch cube? So we are talking about serious heat time.Was going to go down the path of using backfilled engraving, looking at the work in the images shared I'd have to consider combining the methods. Idea being to doing something similar I saw years ago, sort of like an artist story book to be center in a work with bubble blocks. - peace, haydo

The only difference between painting for stained glass and painting for fusing is the series of colors you use. The paints all come as powders and handle identically on the brush. They behave differently in the fire. Most colors designed to mature between 1380ºF and 1520ºF work just fine when fusing, as long as you have a way for any organic components of the medium to burn off and escape. I say most, because I have a red that only works on the surface, if it is included between layers, it turns gray.

I prefire colors hot enough to stick, but not hot enough to mature before I fuse them encased between layers. Float glass conveniently allows me to fire to 1080 and accomplish this without the glass deforming. If I were firing on fusing glasses, I would add some lower temp flux, (or low temp colors) so I could fire the glass lower than it's bending temp.

The stained glass colors mature around 1250ºF

Thanks Bert, it's going to be less noisy and messy with the brush. Will just have to play with it to see if I get the results I'm looking for. peace, haydo