St. Francis and Friends is Coming into Being

Almost New Year's Eve!
This St. Francis painting on glass is in the last stages of completion. Bottom darker colors and star trails are left to add before the final stage - the sky. Once layers of the sky are started, there are no corrections. Actually, at this advanced stage of the painting, corrections are not possible because of the 5 - 6 layers of paint for each leaf, animal, branch has been painted many times for depth.

St. Francis painting on glass from the front, before the bottom and sky added.

St. Francis painting on glass from the back. Additional foliage depth has been added.

St. Francis glass painting from the back showing the translucency of the layers in areas. 

The blue paper is inserted behind the painting frequently to evaluate details. It is an important sky preview of darker blue to evaluate light and dark areas, elements (values).

The dogwood flowers are not white, but a light blue to be secondary to the dogs and cats in importance. The white against the blue would have made them come forward too much.
Composition concepts apply to all my paintings: rule of thirds, values, hue, intensity, tone, overall balance.

St. Francis painting on glass, almost finished. Blue paper behind to preview details.

Stay tuned for the last, finishing stages! Then off to the photographer for the professional photos :)

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.