Painting (elementary)--Pigments--Mixing--How to Fill the
Brush--Outline--Examples--Industry--The Needle and
Stick--Completing the Outline.
The pigments for painting on glass are powders, being the oxides of
various minerals, chiefly iron. There are others; but take it thus--that
the iron oxide is a red pigment, and the others are introduced, mainly,
to modify this. The red pigment is the best to use, and goes off less in
the firing; but, alas! it is a detestably ugly _colour_, like red lead;
and, do what you will, you cannot use it on white glass. Against clear
sky it looks pretty well in some lights, but get it in a sidelight, or
at an angle, and the whole window looks like red brick; while, seen
against any background except clear sky, it always looks so from all
points of view. There are various makers of these pigments. Some
glass-painters make their own, and a beginner with any knowledge of
chemistry would be wise to work in that direction.
I need not discuss the various kinds of pigment; what follows is a
description of my own practice in the matter.
_To Mix the Pigment for Painting._--Take a teaspoonful of red
tracing-colour, and a rather smaller spoonful of intense black, put them
on a slab of thick ground-glass about 9 inches square, and drop clean
water upon them till you can work them up into a paste with the
palette-knife (fig. 18); work them up for a minute or so, till the paste
is smooth and the lumps broken up, and then add about three drops of
strong gum made from the purest white gum-arabic dissolved in cold
water. Any good chemist will sell this, but its purity is a matter of
great importance, for you want the maximum of adhesiveness with the
minimum of the material.
Mix the colour well up with the knife; then take one of those
long-haired sable brushes, which are called "riggers" (fig. 19), and
which all artists'-colourmen sell, and fill it with the colour, diluting
it with enough water to make it quite thin. Do not dilute all the
pigment; keep most of it in a tidy lump, merely moist, as you ground it
and not further wetted, at the corner of your slab; but always keep a
portion diluted in a small "pond" in the middle of your palette.
[Illustration: Fig. 18.]
_How to Fill the Brush with Pigment._--Now you must note that this is a
heavy powder floating free in water, therefore it quickly sinks to the
bottom of your little "pond." _Each time you fill your_ _brush you must
"stir up the mud_," for the "mud" is what you want to get in your brush,
and not only so, but you want to get your brush _evenly full_ of it from
tip to base, therefore you must splay out the hairs flat against the
glass, till all are wet, and then in taking it off the palette,
"twiddle" it to a point quickly. This takes long to describe, but it
does not take a couple of seconds to do. You must have the patience to
spend so much pains on it, and even to fill the brush very often, nearly
for each touch; then you will get a clear, smooth, manageable stroke for
your outline, and save time in the end.
[Illustration: FIG. 19.]
_How to Paint in Outline._--Make some strokes (fig. 20) on a piece of
glass and let them dry; some people like them to stick very tight to the
glass, some so that a touch of the finger removes them; you must find
which suits you by-and-by, and vary the amount of gum accordingly; but
to begin, I would advise that they should be just removable by a
moderately hard rub with the finger, rather less hard a rub than you
close a gummed envelope with.
Practise now for a time the making of strokes, large and small, dark and
light, broad and fine; and when you have got command of your tools, set
yourself the task of doing the same thing, _copying an example placed
underneath your bit of glass_. You will find a hand-rest (fig. 21) an
assistance in this.
[Illustration: FIG. 20.]
It is difficult to give any list of examples suitable for this stage of
glass, but the kind of line employed on the best _heraldry_ is always
good for the purpose. The splendid illustrations of this in Mr. St.
John-Hope's book of the stall-plates of the Knights of the Garter at
Windsor, examples of which by the author's courtesy I am allowed to
reproduce (figs. 22-22A), are ideal for bold outline-work, and
fascinatingly interesting for their own sake. In most of these there is
not only excellent practice in _outline_, and a great deal of it, but,
mixed with it, practice also in flat washes, which it is a good thing to
be learning side by side with the other.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.]
And here let me note that there are throughout the practice of
glass-painting _many_ methods in use at every stage. Each person, each
firm of glass-stainers, has his own methods and traditions. I shall not
trouble to notice all these as we come to them, but describe what seems
to me to be the best practice in each case; but I shall here and there
give a word about others.
For instance: if you use sugar or treacle instead of gum, you get a
rather smoother-working pigment, and after it is dry you can moisten it
as often as you will for further work by merely breathing on the
surface; and perhaps if your aim is _outline only_, it may be well to
try it; but if you wish to pass shading-colour over it you must use gum,
for you cannot do so over treacle colour; nor do I think treacle serves
so well for the next process I am to describe, which here follows.
[Illustration: FIG. 22.]
[Illustration: FIG. 22A.]
_How to complete the Outline better than you possibly can by One
Tracing._--When you take up a bit of glass from the table, after having
done all you can to make a correct tracing, you will be disappointed
with the result. It will have looked pretty well on the table with the
copy showing behind it and hiding its defects, but it is a different
thing when held up to the searching daylight. This must not, however,
discourage you. No one, not the most skilful, could expect to make a
perfect copy of an original (if that original had any fineness of line
or sensitiveness of touch about it) by merely tracing it downwards on
the bench. You must put it upright against the daylight, and mend your
drawing, freehand, faithfully by the copy.
These remarks do not, in a great degree, apply to the case of hard
outlines specially prepared for literal translation. I am speaking of
those where the outline is, in the artistic sense, sensitive and
refined, as in a Botticelli painting or a Holbein drawing, and to copy
these well you want an easel.
For this small work any kind of frame with a sheet of glass in it, and a
ledge to rest your bit of glass on and a leg to stand out behind, will
do, and by all means get it made (fig. 23); but do not spend too much on
it, for later on you will want a bigger and more complicated thing,
which will be described in its proper place--that is to say, when we
come to it; and we shall come to it when we come to deal with work made
up of a number of pieces of glass, as all windows must be.
[Illustration: FIG. 23.]
This that you have now, not being a window but a bit of glass to
practise on, what I have described above will do for it.
_A note to be always industrious and to work with all your might._--I
advise you to put this work on an easel; but this is not the way such
work is usually done;--where the work is done as a task (alas, that it
could ever be so!) it is held listlessly in the left hand while touched
with the right; but no artist can afford to be at this disadvantage, or
at any disadvantage.
Fancy a surgeon having to hold the limb with one hand while he uses the
lancet with the other, or an astronomer, while he makes his measurement,
bunglingly moving his telescope by hand while he pursues his star,
instead of having it driven by the clock!
You cannot afford to be less keen or less in earnest, and you want both
hands free--ay! more than this--your whole body free: you must not be
lazy and sit glued to your stool; you must get up and walk backwards and
forwards to look at your work. Do you think art is so easy that you can
afford to saunter over it?
Do, I beg you, dear reader, pay attention to these words; for it is true
(though strange) that the hardest thing I have found in teaching has
been to get the pupil to take the most reasonable care not to hamper and
handicap himself by omitting to have his work comfortably and
conveniently placed and his tools and materials in good order. You shall
find a man going on painting all day, working in a messing, muddling
way--wasting time and money--because his pigment has not been covered up
when he left off work yesterday, and has got dusty and full of "hairs";
another will waste hour after hour, cricking his neck and squinting at
his work from a corner, when thirty seconds and a little wit would move
his work where he would get a good light and be comfortable; or he will
work with bad tools and grumble, when five minutes would mend his tools
and make him happy.
An artist's work--any artist's, but especially a glass-painter's--should
be just as finished, precise, clean, and alert as a surgeon's or a
dentist's. Have you not in the case of these (when the affair has not
been too serious) admired the way in which the cool, white hands move
about, the precision with which the finger-tips take up this or that,
and when taken up use it "just _so_," neither more nor less: the
spotlessness and order and perfect finish of every tool and material,
from those fearsome things which (though you prefer not to dwell on
their uses) you cannot help admiring, down to the snowy cotton-wool
daintily poked ready through the holes in a little silver beehive? Just
such skill, handling, and precision, and just such perfection of
instruments, I urge as proper to painting.
_What Tools are wanted to complete the Outline._--I will now describe
those tools which you want at this stage, that is, _to mend your outline
with_.
[Illustration: FIG. 24.]
You want the brush which you used in the first instance to paint it
with, and that has already been described; but you also want points of
various fineness to etch it away with where it is too thick; these are
the needle and the stick (fig. 24); any needle set in a handle will do,
but if you want it for fine work, take care that it be sharp. "How
foolish," you say; "as if you need tell us that." On the contrary,--nine
people out of ten need telling, because they go upon the assumption that
a needle _must_ be sharp, "as sharp as a needle," and cannot need
sharpening,--and they will go on for 365 days in a year wondering why a
needle (which _must_ be sharp) should take out so much coarser a light
than they want.
Now as to "sticks"; if you make a point of soft wood it lasts for three
or four touches and then gets "furred" at the point, and if of very hard
wood it slips on the glass. Bamboo is good; but the best of all--that is
to say for broad stick-lights--is an old, sable oil-colour brush,
clogged with oil and varnish till it is as hard as horn and then cut to
a point; this "clings" a little as it goes over the glass, and is most
comfortable to use.
I have no doubt that other materials may be equally good, celluloid or
horn, for example; the student must use his own ingenuity on such a
simple matter.
_How to Complete the Outline._--With the tools above described complete
the outline--by adding colour with the brush where the lines are too
fine, and by taking it away with needle or stick where they are too
coarse; make it by these means exactly like the copy, and this is all
you need do. But as an example of the degree of correctness attainable
(and therefore to be demanded) are here inserted two illustrations
(figs. 25 and 26), one of the example used, and the other of a copy made
from it by a young apprentice.
[Illustration: FIG. 25.]
[Illustration: FIG. 26.]