Gallery Glass Window Paint - 2oz

Posted by Andrade on April 26th, 2021

Glass Painting Techniques - History And Ideas You Can Apply™

Though slightly forgotten nowadays, the intricate art of glass painting was once the most dominant form of painting in Europe. Artworks created with a multitude of glass painting techniques decorated walls of the medieval religious buildings that were visited by millions of people who never got the chance to observe a portrait or a landscape painting. This applied art, almost a thousand-year-old, is multifaceted, to say the least. The nature of painting on glass incorporates numerous elements including aesthetic appeal, complex compositions, and consideration for effects that appear once painted glass is exposed to light sources. Developed in the 9th-century Germany, the art of glass painting reached its peak in the 17th century with numerous Gothic cathedrals graced by the stained glass masterpieces. The very first motifs were abstract, composed of numerous pieces of colored glass, as the artists lacked the tools and the materials needed to embody details and figurative forms. In the middle ages, religious motifs took the central stage and stained glass painting on windows often served as a tool for illustrating the scenes from the Bible to an illiterate crowd.

In the 16th century, special colors entitled enamels give birth to the type of glass painting that we know today. These colors could be mixed and applied like any other paint which lead to the expansion of the ancient art genre. During the 17th century, glass painting was booming as Gothic architecture developed a more ornamental form and stained glass windows become bigger, allowing greater creativity and illumination. In France, a new kind of circular stained glass painting on windows emerged and was quickly entitled "rose windows", due to the flower-like appearance of the objects. The 20th century has seen the development of brand-new forms and glass painting techniques such as copper foil and stenciling. Today, artists working with glass have a multitude of water and oil-based paints and an array of tools at their disposal. You can paint everything from large scale glass paintings and three-dimensional sculptures to your everyday wine glasses. And with the development of techniques that don't even require firing (once an unavoidable step in the creation of a glass painting), you don't even have to be an artist in order to paint glass. But that wasn't always the case.

How to Paint Glass - Traditional Glass Painting Techniques

Though many glass painting techniques appeared throughout the ages most of them only represent slight variations of styles dating back to medieval times. One of the first techniques for creating wonderful glass artworks, stained glass, for instance, is still used today. The technique implied using various metallic salts to color the glass into numerous shades and then used fragments of them to assemble a mosaic-like masterpiece. Glass fragments were kept in place by lead strips curved and soldered together to embody the design that was previously painted on a whitewashed table (paper was a pricey commodity at the time). This medieval technique has expanded with the development of glass paint that could be added to the artwork which enabled adding details to the colored base. The colors came in various shades of black and brown and the shade of the color depended on the amount and type of oxide used in its creation. Delicate details were added by employing ordinary art brushes but medieval artists also used sticks and quills in the process to smear the lines epox floor paint and create a coarse effect. This technique of glass staining is alive and well today although it had suffered certain alterations. Lead is replaced by still and colors come in more than two shades.

In the 14th-century innovative glass painting techniques and tools were used to create groundbreaking artworks. Badger hair brush was used to soften the paint but also to produce a stippled effect that was achieved with a pouncing of a dry brush onto the wet paint. Silver stain technique, that's very much in use today is another 14th-century invention that revolutionized the medieval glass painting artistry. Unlike classical glass painting techniques that were limited only to the inner glass, the silver stain was applied to the outside of the glass. This method was characterized by adding a compound of silver into the glass, that would once baked, change the color of the surface. Depending on the firing temperature and thickness of the application the glass would change its color from any shade between pale yellow and deep orange. It wasn't until the 16th century until glass painting colors that we know today appeared. These paints called enamels, made of pigmented metal oxides, ground glass, and a flux mixed with water and gum arabic or lavender oil can be fired directly on the surface of the glass. Enamels basically behave as any other paint, they can be mixed to produce an array of shades and applied with brushes directly on the glass. With the discovery of enamels, the artists could now use all colors from the spectrum on a single piece of glass which enables them to create a variety of shapes, forms, and patterns. For more complex designs enamels can be applied in layers and fired several times which provides a better sense of control, making the colors less see-through and smudged and more vibrant.