Stained Glass Work Part 4

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 38.]

Do not, however, go to the extent of making two lead lines cross each other. Fig. 39 shows the two kinds of joint, A being the wrong one (as I hold), and B the right one; but, after all, this is partly a question of taste.

Do not cut borders and other minor details into measured s.p.a.ces; cut them hap-hazard.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 39.]

Do not cut leaf.a.ge too much by the outlines of the groups of leaves--or wings by the outlines of the groups of feathers.

Do not outline with lead lines any forms of minor importance.

Do not allow the whole of any figure to cut out dark against light, or light against dark; but if the figure is ever so bright, let an inch or two of its outline tell out as a dark against a spot of still brighter light; and if it is ever so dark, be it red or blue as strong as may be, let an inch or two of its outline tell out against a still stronger dark in the background, if you have to paint it pitch-black to do so.

By this "countercharging" (as heralds say), your composition will melt together with a pleasing mystery; for you must always remember that a window is, after all, only a window, it is not the church, and nothing in it should stare out at you so that you cannot get away from it; windows should "dream," and should be so treated as to look like what they are, the apertures to admit the light; subjects painted on a thin and brittle film, hung in mid-air between the light and the dark.

CHAPTER VI

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 gla.s.s at all.

But it is now necessary to tell you how the whole of the gla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s, as large at least as the piece you mean to paint. Thick window-gla.s.s, what gla.s.s-makers call "thirty-two ounce sheet"--that is, gla.s.s 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-gla.s.s. This is expensive, but you do not want the best; what is called "patent plate" does quite well, and cheap plate-gla.s.s can often be got to suit you at the salvage stores, whither it is brought from fires.

Having laid your sheet of gla.s.s down upon the cut-line, place upon it all the bits of gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s, and, dipping it rapidly into the melted wax, convey it in little drops to the points where the various bits of gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s that is to be painted on, the spot must be carefully sc.r.a.ped off and every vestige of it removed with a wet duster dipped in a little grit of some kind--pigment does well--otherwise the gla.s.s is greasy and the painting will not adhere.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 gla.s.s 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 sc.r.a.pe 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 sc.r.a.ped off it is very difficult to see where it was; you are sure to miss some, in going over the gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 41.]

A very coa.r.s.e form of the process is "dry" stippling, where you stipple straight on to the surface of the clear gla.s.s, with pigment taken up off the palette by the stippling brush itself: for coa.r.s.e 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 a.s.sert 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.

Gla.s.s-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 _gla.s.s_, 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s (so as not to wash up your outline); badger it flat, so as just to dim the gla.s.s less than "ground gla.s.s" 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 gla.s.s, so long as you do not lay the colour on too thick. The outline-touches should be flat upon the gla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s, it will fire separately from the gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s, what do you think of it _now_? You can remove it at once by sc.r.a.ping 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 sc.r.a.pe off should be sc.r.a.ped off and repainted every time the gla.s.s comes from the kiln; and that brings us to the important question of _firing_.

CHAPTER VII

Firing--Three Kinds of Kiln--Advantages and Disadvantages--The Gas-Kiln--Quick Firing--Danger--Sufficient Firing--Soft Pigments--Difference in Gla.s.ses--"Stale" Work--The Scientific Facts--How to Judge of Firing--Drawing the Kiln.

The way in which the painting is attached to the gla.s.s and made permanent is by firing it in a kiln at great heat, and thus fusing the two together.

Simple enough to say, but who is to describe in writing this process in all its forms? For there is, perhaps, nothing in the art of stained-gla.s.s on which there is greater diversity of opinion and diversity of practice than this matter of firing. But let us make a beginning by saying that there are, it may be said, three chief modifications of the process.

First, the use of the old, closed, c.o.ke or turf kiln.

Second, of the closed gas-kiln.

And third, of the open gas-kiln.

The first consists of a chamber of brick or terra-cotta, in which the gla.s.s is placed on a bed of powdered whitening, on iron plates, one above another like shelves, and the whole enclosed in a chamber where the heat is raised by a fire of c.o.ke or peat.

This, be it understood, is a slow method. The heat increases gradually, and applies to the gla.s.s what the kiln-man calls a "good, soaking heat."

The meaning of this expression, of course, is that the gradual heat gives time for the gla.s.s and the pigment to fuse together in a natural way, more likely to be good and permanent in its results than a process which takes a twentieth part of the time and which therefore (it is a.s.sumed) must wrench the materials more harshly from their nature and state.

There are, it must be admitted, one or two things to be said for this view which require answering.

First, that this form of kiln has the virtue of being old; for in such a thing as this, beyond all manner of doubt, was fired all the splendid stained-gla.s.s of the Middle Ages.