The Second Painting--Disappointment with Fired Work--A False
Remedy--A Useful Tool--The Needle--A Resource of Desperation--The
Middle Course--Use of the Finger--The Second Painting--Procedure.
And when you have looked at it, as I said just now you should do, your
first thought will be a wish that you had never been born. For no one, I
suppose, ever took his first batch of painted glass out of the kiln
without disappointment and without wondering what use there is in such
an art. For the painting when it went in was grey, and silvery, and
sharp, and crisp, and firm, and brilliant. Now all is altered; all the
relations of light and shade are altered; the sharpness of every
brush-mark is gone, and everything is not only "washed out" to half its
depth, but blurred at that. Even if you could get it, by a second
painting, to look exactly as it was at first, you think: "What a waste
of life! I thought I had done! It was _right_ as it was; I was pleased
so far; but now I am tired of the thing; I don't want to be doing it all
over again."
Well, my dear reader, I cannot tell you a remedy for this state of
things--it is one of the conditions of the craft; you must find by
experience what pigment, and what glass, and what style of using them,
and what amount of fire give the least of these disappointing results,
and then make the best of it; and make up your mind to do without
certain effects in glass, which you find are unattainable.
There is, however, one remedy which I suppose all glass-painters try,
but eventually discard. I suppose we have all passed through the stage
of working very dark, to allow for the firing-off; and I want to say a
word of warning which may prevent many heartaches in this matter. I
having passed through them all, there is no reason why others should.
Now mark very carefully what follows, for it is difficult to explain,
and you cannot afford to let the sense slip by you.
I told you that a film left untouched would always come out as a black
patch against work that was pierced with the scrub, however slightly.
Now, herein lies the difficulty of working with a very thick matt; for
if it is thick enough on the cheek and brow of a face to give strong
modelling when fired, _then whenever it has passed over the previous
outline-painting, for example, in the eyes, mouth, nostrils, &c., you
will find that the two together have become too thick for the scrub to
move._
Now you do not need, as an artist, to be told that it is fatal to allow
_any_ part of your painting to be thus beyond your control; to be
obliged to say, "It's too dark, but unfortunately I have no tools that
will lighten it--it will not yield to the scrub."
However, a certain amount can be done in this direction by using, on the
shadows that are _just_ too strong for the scrub, a tool made by
grinding down on sandpaper a large hog-hair brush, and, of these, what
are called stencil-brushes are as good as any (fig. 45).
You do not use this by dragging it over the glass as you drag a scrub,
but by _pricking_ the whole of the surface which you wish to lighten.
This will make little pinholes all over it, which will be sufficient to
let the patch of shadow gently down to the level of the surrounding
lighter modelling, and will prevent your dark shadows looking like
actual "patches," as we described them doing a little way back.
[Illustration: FIG. 45.]
Further than this you cannot go: for I cannot at all see how the next
process I am to describe can be a good one, though I once thought, as I
suppose most do, that it would really solve the difficulty. What I
allude to is the use of the needle.
_Of Work Etched out with a Needle._--The needle is a very good and
useful tool for stained glass, in certain operations, but I am now to
speak of it as being used over whole areas _as a substitute for the
scrub, in order to deal with a matt too dense for the scrub to
penetrate._
The needle will, to be sure, remove such a matt; that is to say, will
remove lines out of it, quite clear and sharp, and this, too, out of a
matt so dense, that what remains does not fire away much in the kiln.
Here is a tempting thing then! to have one's work unchanged by the fire!
And if you could achieve this without changing the character of the work
for the worse, no doubt this method would be a very fine thing. But let
me trace it step by step and try to describe what happens.
You have painted your outline and you put a very heavy matt over it.
Peril No. 1.--If your matt is so dense that it will not _fire off_, it
must very nearly approach the point of density at which it will _fry_.
How then about the portions of it which have been painted on, as I have
said, over _another_ layer of pigment in the shape of the _outline_?
Here is a _danger_. But even supposing that all is safe, and that you
have just stopped short of the danger point. You have now your dense,
rich, brown matt, with the outline just showing through it. Proceed to
model it with the needle. The first stroke will really frighten you; for
a flash of silver light will spring along after the point of the needle,
so dazzling in contrast to the extreme dark of the matt that it looks as
if the plate had been cut in two, while the matt beside it becomes
pitch-black by contrast. Well, you go on, and by putting more strokes,
and reducing the surrounding darkness generally, you get the drawing to
look grey--but you get it to look like a grey _pen-drawing_ or
_etching_, not like a painting at all. We will suppose that this seems
to you no disadvantage (though I must say, at once, that I think it a
very great one); but now you come to the deep shadows; and these, I need
hardly say, cut themselves out, more than ever, like dark patches or
blots, in the manner already spoken of. You try pricking it with the
brush I have described for that operation, and it will not do it; then
you resort to the needle itself, and you are startled at the little,
hard, glittering specks that come jumping out of the black shadow at
each touch. You get a finer needle, and then you sharpen even that on
the hone; and perhaps then, by pricking gingerly round the edges of the
shadows, you may get the drawing and modelling to melt together fairly
well. But beware! for if there is one dot of light too many, the
expression of the head goes to the winds. Let us say that such a thing
occurs; you have pricked one pinhole too many round the corner of the
mouth.
What can you do?
You take your tracing-brush and try to mend it with a touch of pigment;
and so on, and so on; till you timidly say (feeling as if you had been
walking among egg-shells for the last hour), "Well, I _think_ it will
_do_, and I daren't touch it any more." And supposing by these means you
get a head that looks really what you wanted; the work is all what
glass-painters call "rotten"; liable to flake off at the least touch;
isolated bits of thick crust, cut sheer out from each other, with clear
glass between.
In short, the thing is a niggling and botching sort of process to my
mind, and I hope that the above description is sufficiently life-like to
show that I have really given it a good trial myself--with, as a result,
the conclusion certainly strongly borne home to me, that the delight of
having one's work unchanged by the fire is too dearly purchased at the
cost of it.
_How to get the greatest degree of Strength into your Painting without
Danger._--Short of using a needle then, and a matt that will only yield
to that instrument, I would advise, if you want the work strong, that
you should paint the matt so that it will just yield, and only just, and
that with difficulty, to the scrub; and, before you use this tool, just
pass the finger, lightly, backwards and forwards over the matted
surface. This will take out a shimmer of light here and there, according
to the inequalities of the texture in the glass itself; the first
touches of the scrub will not then look so startling and hard as if
taken out of the dead, even matt; and also this rubbing of the finger
across the surface seems to make the matt yield more easily to the tool.
The dust remaining on the surface perhaps helps this; anyhow, this is as
far as you can go on the side of strength in the work. You can of course
"back" the work, that is, paint on the back as well as the front--a mere
film at the back; but this is a method of a rather doubtful nature. The
pigment on the back does not fire equally well with that on the front,
and when the window is in its place, that side will be, you must bear in
mind, exposed to the weather.
I have spoken incidentally of rubbing the glass with the finger as a
part of painting; but the practice can be carried further and used more
generally than I have yet said: the little "pits" and markings on the
surface of the glass, which I mentioned when I spoke of the "right and
wrong sides" of the material, can be drawn into the service of the
window sometimes with very happy effect. Being treated with matt and
then rubbed with the finger, they often produce very charming varieties
of texture on the glass, which the painter will find many ways of making
useful.
_Of the Second Painting of Glass after it has been Fired._--So far we
have only spoken of the appearance of work after its first fire, and its
influence upon choice of method for _first painting_; but there is of
course the resource which is the proper subject of this chapter, namely,
the second painting.
Very small work can be done with one fire; but only very skilful
painters can get work, on any large scale, strong enough for one fire to
serve, and that only with the use of backing. Of course if very faint
tones of shadow satisfy you, the work can be done with one fire; but if
it is well fired it must almost of necessity be pale. Some people like
it so--it is a matter of taste, and there can be no pronouncement made
about it; but if you wish your work to look strong in light and
shade--stronger than one painting will make it--I advise you, when the
work comes back from the fire and is waxed up for the second time
(which, in any case, it assuredly should be, if only for your judgment
upon it), to proceed as follows.
First, with a tracing-brush, go over all the lines and outlined shadows
that seem too weak, and then, when these touches are quite dry, pass a
thin matt over the whole, and with stippling-brushes of various sizes,
stipple it nearly all away while wet. You will only have about five
minutes in which to deal with any one piece of glass in this way, and in
the case of a head, for example, it needs a skilful hand to complete it
in that short space of time. The best plan is to make several "shots" at
it; if you do not hit the mark the first time, you may the second or the
third. I said "stipple it nearly all away"; but the amount left must be
a matter of taste; nevertheless, you must note that if you do not remove
enough to make the work look "silvery," it is in danger of looking
"muddy." All the ordinary resources of the painter's art may be brought
in here: retouching into the half-dry second matt, dabbing with the
finger--in short, all that might be done if the thing were a
water-colour or an oil-painting; but it is quite useless to attempt to
describe these deftnesses of hand in words: you may use any and every
method of modifying the light and shade that occurs to you.