Sunday, November 2, 2008

Progress Reports


When I opened the kiln this morning, I was greeted by this beauty! I'm happy with the result and it confirmed why this glass is expensive too. Nice rich colors. The picture doesn't show how well the accents compliment the streaky parts of the glass, but they do. Several of them are iridized, which really adds a nice effect. Given this result, I will proceed with making the next two larger sizes. This piece is so 'fiery' that I think I may call this series Fuego.

As a mentioned a few days ago, I want to try Peter McGrain's glass painting techniques. I now have my design....an aspen branch, of course.


This is my design template I used for cutting out the glass.

And I'm also posting a picture of the actual piece that just went in the kiln this morning. What I've done here is place the template underneath the glass circle and it becomes my guide for leaf placement. Once fused, I'll go back and paint in lines and other washes to create some of the effect I'm going for with this piece.



In my opinion, the cool thing about fusing is you can do things with glass (shapes, lines or lack of lines) that you just can't do in the traditional stained glass method. If all goes well, the fused blank will be ready for painting in the branches and creating some shading for the leaves. You probably noticed some other items with this piece. I'm working on some new pendant designs so I added them to this batch for the fuse.

If I'm happy with the outcome of this small plate (about 9" in diameter), I have two others in larger sizes that I will use for this series. I imagine I'll name this series The Aspen Branch.

Happy Creating All!

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