Bill has completed the preliminary work for our next window project: Renoir’s On the Terrace. Translating any Impressionist painting into a stained glass window is a challenge because there are few hard lines or clear delineations to the images.
The first step to creating any stained glass piece is to make the cartoon. When working with Impressionist source material we have to stand back, look at the image, and define what the objects in the painting actually are. The most challenging area of this image is the background which is full of trees, foliage, and the distant buildings and boaters. We will be working with plated layers of fracture/streamer glass to create the soft palate of colors in the painting.
Before we can begin work on the main body of the piece, Bill has to get the painted hands and faces of the figures completed. Creating painted images on glass involves hand-painting layers of powdered minerals onto the glass surface, each of which must be fired in a kiln before the next layer can be added. Shown at the right is the first fired layer on the figure’s faces. This “tracing” layer defines the features of the woman and girl and gives Bill a structure to begin adding layers of color to each face.
