Painting (advanced)--Waxing-up--Cleanliness--Further Methods of
Painting--Stipple--Dry Stipple--Film--Effects of Distance--Danger
of Over-Painting--Frying.
I have mentioned all these points of judgment and good taste we have
just finished speaking of, because they are matters that must
necessarily come before you at the time you are making the cartoon, the
preliminary drawing of the window, and before you come to handle the
glass at all.
But it is now necessary to tell you how the whole of the glass, when it
is cut, must be fixed together, so that you can both see it and paint
upon it as a whole picture. This is done as follows:--
First place the cut-line (for the making of which you have already had
instructions) face upwards on the bench, and over it place a sheet of
glass, as large at least as the piece you mean to paint. Thick
window-glass, what glass-makers call "thirty-two ounce sheet"--that is,
glass that weighs about thirty-two ounces to the square foot--will do
well enough for very small subjects, but for anything over a few square
feet, it is better to use thin plate-glass. This is expensive, but you
do not want the best; what is called "patent plate" does quite well, and
cheap plate-glass can often be got to suit you at the salvage stores,
whither it is brought from fires.
Having laid your sheet of glass down upon the cut-line, place upon it
all the bits of glass in their proper places; then take beeswax (and by
all means let it be the best and purest you can get; get it at a
chemist's, not at the oil-shop), and heat a few ounces of it in a
saucepan, and _when all of it is melted_--not before, and as little
after as may be--take any convenient tool, a penknife or a strip of
glass, and, dipping it rapidly into the melted wax, convey it in little
drops to the points where the various bits of glass meet each other,
dropping a single drop of wax at each joint. It is no advantage to have
any extra drops along the _sides_ of the bits; if each _corner_ is
properly secured, that is all that is needed (fig. 40).
Some people use a little resin or tar with the wax to make it more
brittle, so that when the painting is finished and the work is to be
taken down again off the plate, the spots of wax will chip off more
easily. I do not advise it. Boys in the shop who are just entering their
apprenticeship get very skilful, and quite properly so, in doing this
work; waxing up yard after yard of glass, and never dropping a spot of
wax on the surface.
It is much to be commended: all things done in the arts should be done
as well as they can be done, if only for the sake of character and
training; but in this case it is a positive advantage that the work
should be done thus cleanly, because if a spot of wax is dropped on the
surface of the glass that is to be painted on, the spot must be
carefully scraped off and every vestige of it removed with a wet duster
dipped in a little grit of some kind--pigment does well--otherwise the
glass is greasy and the painting will not adhere.
[Illustration: FIG. 40.]
For the same reason the wax-saucepan should be kept very clean, and the
wax frequently poured off, and all sediment thrown away. A bit of
cotton-fluff off the duster is enough to drag a "lump" out on the end of
the waxing-tool, which, before you have time to notice it, will be
dribbling over the glass and perhaps spoiling it; for you must note that
sometimes it is necessary to re-wax down _unfired_ work, which a drop of
wax the size of a pinhole, flirted off from the end of the tool, will
utterly ruin. How important, then, to be cleanly.
And in this matter of removing such spots from _fired_ work, do please
note that you should _use the knife and the duster alternately_ for
_each spot_. Do not scrape a batch of the spots off first and then go
over the ground again with the duster--this can only save a second or
two of time, and the merest fraction of trouble; and these are ill saved
indeed at the cost of doing the work ill. And you are sure to do it so,
for when the spot is scraped off it is very difficult to see where it
was; you are sure to miss some, in going over the glass with a duster,
and you will discover them again, to your cost and annoyance, when you
matt over them for the second painting: and, just when you cannot afford
to spare a single moment--in some critical process--they will come out
like round o's in the middle of your shading, compelling you to break
off your work and do now what should have been done before you began to
paint.
But the best plan of all is to avoid the whole thing by doing the work
cleanly from the first. And it is quite easy; for all you have to do is
to carry the tool horizontally till it is over the spot where you want
the wax, and then, by a tilt of the hand, slide the drop into its place.
_Further Methods of Painting._--There are two chief methods of treating
the matt--one is the "stipple," and the other the "film" or badgered
matt.
_The Stipple._--When you have put on your matt with the camel-hair
brush, take a stippling brush (fig. 41) and stab the matt all over with
it while it is wet. A great variety of texture can be got in this way,
for you may leave off the process at any moment; if you leave it off
soon, the work will be soft and blurred, for, not being dry, the pigment
will spread again as soon as you leave off: but, if you choose, you can
go on stippling till the whole is dry, when the pigment will gather up
into little sharp spots like pepper, and the glass between them will be
almost clear. You must bear in mind that you cannot use scrubs over work
like the last described, and cannot use them to much advantage over
stipple at all. You can draw a needle through; but as a rule you do not
want to take lights out of stipple, since you can complete the shading
in the single process by stippling more or less according to the light
and shade you want.
[Illustration: FIG. 41.]
A very coarse form of the process is "dry" stippling, where you stipple
straight on to the surface of the clear glass, with pigment taken up off
the palette by the stippling brush itself: for coarse distant work this
may be sometimes useful.
Now as to film. We have spoken of laying on an even matt and badgering
it smooth; and you can use this with a certain amount of stipple also
with very good effect; but you are to notice one great rule about these
two processes, namely, that the same amount of pigment _obscures much
more light used in film than used in stipple_.
Light _spreads_ as it comes through openings; and a very little light
let, in pinholes, through a very dark matt, will, at a distance, so
assert itself as to prevail over the darkness of the matt.
It is really very little use going on to describe the way the colour
acts in these various processes; for its behaviour varies with every
degree of all of them. One may gradually acquire the skill to combine
all the processes, in all their degrees, upon a single painting; and the
only way in which you can test their relative value, either as texture
or as light and shade, is to constantly practise each process in all its
degrees, and see what results each has, both when seen near at hand and
also when seen from a distance. It is useless to try and learn these
things from written directions; you must make them your own, as precious
secrets, by much practice and much experiment, though it will save you
years of both to learn under a good master.
But this question of distance is a most important thing, and we must
enlarge upon it a little and try to make it quite clear.
Glass-painting is not like any other painting in this respect.
Let us say that you see an oil-painting--a portrait--at the end of the
large room in some big Exhibition. You stand near it and say, "Yes, that
is the King" (or the Commander-in-Chief), "a good likeness; however do
they do those patent-leather boots?" But after you have been down one
side of the room and turn round at the other end to yawn, you catch
sight of it again; and still you say, "Yes, it's a good likeness," and
"really those boots are very clever!" But if it had been your own
painting on _glass_, and sitting at your easel you had at last said,
"Yes,--_now_ it's like the drawing--_that's_ the expression," you could
by no means safely count on being able to say the same at all distances.
You may say it at ten feet off, at twenty, and yet at thirty the shades
may all gather together into black patches; the drawing of the eyelids
and eyes may vanish in one general black blot, the half-tones on the
cheeks may all go to nothing. These actual things, for instance, _will_
be the result if the cheeks are stippled or scrubbed, and the shade
round the eyes left as a _film_--ever so slight a film will do it. Seen
near, you _see the drawing through the film_; but as you go away the
light will come pouring stronger and stronger through the brush or
stipple marks on the cheeks, until all films will cut out against it
like black spots, altering the whole expression past recognition.
Try this on simple terms:--
Do a face on white glass in strong outline only: step back, and the face
goes to nothing; strengthen the outline till the forms are quite
monstrous--the outline of the nose as broad as the bridge of it--still,
at a given distance, it goes to nothing; the expression varies every
step back you take. But now, take a matting brush, with a film so thin
that it is hardly more than dirty water; put it on the back of the glass
(so as not to wash up your outline); badger it flat, so as just to dim
the glass less than "ground glass" is dimmed;--and you will find your
outline look almost the same at each distance. It is the pure light that
plays tricks, and it will play them through a pinhole.
And now, finally, let us say that you may do anything you _can_ do in
the painting of glass, so long as you do not lay the colour on too
thick. The outline-touches should be flat upon the glass, and above all
things should not be laid on so wet, or laid on so thick, that the
pigment forms into a "drop" at the end of the touch; for this drop, and
all pigment that is thick upon the glass like that, will "fry" when it
is put into the kiln: that is to say, being so thick, and standing so
far from the surface of the glass, it will fire separately from the
glass itself and stand as a separate crust above it, and this will
perish.
Plate IX. shows the appearance of the bubbles or blisters in a bit of
work that has fried, as seen under a microscope of 20 diameters; and if
you are inclined to disregard the danger of this defect as seen of its
natural size, when it is a mere roughness on the glass, what do you
think of it _now_? You can remove it at once by scraping it with a
knife; and indeed, if through accident a touch here and there does fry,
it is your only plan to so remove it. All you can scrape off should be
scraped off and repainted every time the glass comes from the kiln; and
that brings us to the important question of _firing_.