St. Francis Glass Painting Progress

As this sweet painting has evolved, I will keep posting to document the journey of this painting on glass. When finished, the painting is photographed by Wilson Graham, who does the best job, knowing how to capture all of the metallics and color.

A tiny golden Barn Owl in the Pine tree

A happy singing Prothonotary Warbler

St. Francis in East Texas with Gus, Swiffer, Pepper, KC, Sassy. Almost there!

St. Francis and friends with blue paper preview.

St. Francis glass painting, back side. Side that is painted on.

For now, I have almost all the details of the animals finished. On to St. Francis's robe and the leaves above his head!

I fine tune the details with a very sharp Xacto knife and razor blades. Oh, and a large magnifying glass. Very Carefully scraping paint to refine edges. I will go over the painting many times doing this and adding more layers of paint.

The FolkArt glass enamel paints are somewhat translucent, depending on the color. This means that each leaf, flower, blade of grass, animals, everything, requires 4 - 5 layers of paint.
It allows for layering of different glazes of color to create depth, shadows.  I love using silver and gold metallic in my glass paintings. The metallics require 1 - 3 layers, depending on the effect I want.

Often, just before adding the final element of the sky I will back some areas with white. So the dark blue of the sky will not shadow through in the lighter colors.

In the cool winter these paints take about two days to cure onto the glass. In the hot summer, about a day. I love the bright colors, ease of use and permanence of the paints. They are fairly UV and fade resistant, but as with any fine art painting, no direct sunlight.

The sky is crucial and is carefully layered in blues, violet blues, white (stars). A large filbert is used to leave softer edges. Star trails are scraped back with a razor blade in areas. Almost impossible to correct, a one time deal.

Blue and white paper is used constantly to gauge where the details are at, depending on the detail.
That is what you see in the photo, blue or white paper slipped behind the painting.