Rose
Painted and Stained Glass
about 24" square
January 2011

From the ashes of despair arises new hope.... SO, New Years Eve I was all set to go out, have a good time, and then say goodbye to my folks the next day and set off on the drive home... except that the tranny blew in my truck, and I was stranded on a holiday weekend a thousand miles from home. In a snowstorm. BUT, aside from all the stress, heartache, and financial misery, it DID afford me the opportunity to spend an extra week making use of my dad's studio. Pondering what to do, I decided to play around with a few different ideas and techniques. I had to keep things relatively simple, as I didnt have a ton of time to design, I had to just sort of jump into the execution phase of things.

First off, I wanted to see if i could take painting on glass to another level. See, I've tried shading a couple of times in the past, and it's never come out all that brilliantly. So I thought back to the old cathederal windows I've seen, and when they paint, it looks as if they are perhaps using a sponge to remove pigment, rather than tentatively add a line or a stroke here and there. Therefore, i wanted to see if I could figure out how to add actual shading to a painted glass figure. After painting and firing the smoothe lines in the usual manner, I went back for a second coat with a good deal of paint and a wet shammycloth, and simply blotted, adding and removing pigment as I went, trying for some kind of gradient, just to see what I could do. What do you think? How do you think it came out?

Secondly, it seems that we can design and cut flowers far more intricately than we can gracefully assemble them. Too often a brightly lit blossom devolves into a heavy mass of dark solder by the time a piece has been finished. However, by cutting and fusing, I think one can preserve the color and patterns of the glass, while still adding shape and form as well. How do you think the rose turned out? And yes, it IS a bit big, but I think that was the whole point of having such a large flower to work with in the beginning.

Thirdly, I went back and added a touch of red to the lips, of blue to the eyes; I like it, but how does it strike you? I find it interesting the way that the glass changes from fusing to fusing. In the past, we've had issues with glass darkening as it goes through the kiln; if you fuse a face and not the rest of the body, you can see a definite demarcation line. As it was, we did TWO faces, one with champaign and one with ivory. Typically, as with most of the Muchas, we use champaign for the skintones, as it is darker (while ivory is lighter, as with the Kairit piece). However, of the two, this is actually the lighter; it has dropped several shades through the firing process. Very interesting....

Anyways.

I'd like to thank the beautiful *SusanCoffey for granting me permission to use her images for works of art! If you haven't heard of her, definitely DEFINITELY check out her page, and those of her various photographers. Shes drop dead, to die for! !

OH! and the WIP, with both versions of the face and the rose is here: [link]