Stained Glass: Session nine

Fired sections of the leg, edges darkened with oil based paint

My previous painting session had now been fired and I needed to finish the last bits of Sooty's face; two spots for eyes and a roughly triangular mouth. However before I could do that I needed to check how the parts would fit together, so that I could allow for how the leading would work in relation to the position of eyes and the nose. This took most of the session, because I had to grind down the edges of each piece to ensure that I knew where these final painted elements would be. I have to do this with everything once construction begins in earnest, so it was useful to tackle one area to see how much work it would be.

In order to make sure the grinding was accurate, I went back to the cartoon and placed each piece on top, this time marking in white Sharpie any bits of glass that protruded beyond the black central line that represented the thickness of the centre of the leading's 'H' section.

Laying the glass back on the cartoon

Finally after fitting Sooty together again, I was able to simply paint the final areas in, using a lavender oil black paint mix and flooding technique. I had to work fast, because you don’t want the paint to dry on you and if your paint doesn’t flow, it’ll very likely blister when you fire it in the kiln. Each small area was flooded using re-mixed paint. Again this is important, in the time between one flooding and another the paint will dry and change consistency, so you have to mix every time, even though it feels as if you could get away with not doing this. 

Flooding applied to nose and eyes

Once the flooding had been done, I needed to fit everything back together again, (being careful not to disturb the eye and nose paint). I would then be able to assess whether or not the arm sections needed any more work; look at how the drawing of the leg was sitting within the new darker boarder and check whether or not I wanted to rework the area around the fused frit work that now constituted the heel. One possibility was to use silver stain to establish a glow around the frit edges, but I decided against this, hoping that the leading will visually cohere the various elements together.

The final part of the session was therefore spent putting the whole window together on the light-box, so that any final decisions could be made before the silver staining session. It was then agreed that I would undertake a short session to get that done before the Xmas break. Hopefully the two sections that make up Sooty's head will be fired by next week. 

 

The window is put together for on the light-box checking

Frit 'heel pain' section and leg which now has its edge darkened

Nb: I write these sessions up after reflecting on the event, using written notes and photographs taken on the day. The actual session was attended in mid December. 

See also:

Stained glass session one

Stained glass session two

Stained glass session three

Stained glass session four

Stained glass session five

Stained glass session six

Stained glass session seven

Stained glass session eight

Stained glass session ten

Drawing on transparent drafting film

Stained glass: Session four

 Most of session four was devoted to cutting glass but an important decision had to be taken at the beginning of the session related to the fused glass section which had been fired during the week. The fused frit circular element, that I had made to represent heel pain was now finished and it posed a few issues. The first was that although it was the right thickness it was lumpy. I could have it re-fired but I decided I liked the look of it and would like to keep it as is. This will make it hard to clean when working on fitting and holding the leaded sections together later on, but I think it will be worth it. The other issue was that I made the circular shape larger than I needed it in relation to the original design, so that I could cut it down afterwards. Now that I have decided to keep the lumpiness, it is impossible to cut, so that It was decided to grind down the edges, and to smooth out the curve, but to maintain the more organic edge, as opposed to the original shape which was drawn using a compass. 

Fused glass made of various course and fine frits

You can just about see the sharp bits on the edge and the fact that sometimes the edge dips inwards, I needed to remove both sharp edges and smooth out the indentations.  

All-Star Glass Grinder

The workshop has an All-Star glass grinder, the main thing to beware of is forgetting to use goggles or to have glasses on to protect your eyes. A smooth movement is needed to keep the curves smooth. (Nb the company that makes these is no more, so replacement grinder heads will be very hard to find)

 

Once the edges had been smoothed off the new shape is placed over the cartoon 

Once in place the Black Sharpie drawn lines indicating the edges between sections of glass, are extended using a white Sharpie onto the fused frit glass circle. An arrow is also drawn so that it is easy to find the top edge. A new more organic circle shape is now drawn using the edge of the glass circle as a template. 

The new shape is drawn and the old one slightly greyed out using the white pen

The new shape cuts into the sections surrounding it, so the first thing I have to do is trace this onto the pieces of pink glass I have already cut. Then I go back into glass cutting mode, first of all recutting the pink and then using the adjusted cartoon, alongside the template sheet that I still continue to cut out, to draw up as many pieces of glass as I can, searching through the trays of glass off-cuts for pieces that are slightly bigger than the paper templates. 

Marked up glass pieces with their paper templates

Once cut I was able to place the sections on the light-box to check how the colour was working. 

Cut pieces set out on the light-box

The 'fit' between sections of cut glass can now also be checked. In this case they seemed to fit pretty well, close enough to not need any immediate grinding off, but when we come to the reality of fitting it all together with the leading, some adjustments will inevitably need to be made. I am personally reassured that I am getting better at the glass cutting and am making less mistakes. In particular I am getting better at controlling the weight of the cutter when making changes in the curve direction when scoring. 

The rest of the session was me cutting glass, including the amber range of glass for the Sooty figure and more small sections of green and blue. By the end of the session I had only 10 pieces of the main design left to cut, but these are larger and I might have to buy in glass for these. Then finally we will look at cutting out glass for the border. 

See also:

Session one 

Session two

Session three

Session five