back to mermaids

a

as always, the photo doesn't do the glass justice, but this mermaid was so much fun to build.  she will go to Wide River Gallery in Colonial Beach, along with my Starry Night panel.  Next project is a crab - with a twist... stay tuned!

time MARCHes on

this blog started with such good intentions, and I see that I haven't posted a thing since early February.  good news is that this means February is over at last... my least favorite month of the year.  I started a mermaid and am soldering today.  I got so excited about doing the mermaid that I didn't take time to post a thing.

I had a beautiful piece of Uroboros that I used for her tail, but had to cut almost every piece on the ring saw.  I love to do pieces like that - where you really have to find the exact right area of the glass to give the shading and texture that looks best.  Photo coming later, maybe tomorrow, but right now I am going to fire up the soldering iron.

is anyone out there working on anything that they'd like to share?  BTW, I just got an email from a new glass website that looks very interesting.

www.glassartnetwork.com

check it out - lots of good info

Starry Night interpreted in stained glass

finished at last!  Two weeks of hard work but it was worth it.  I am happy with the completed panel, and now Bob will frame it for me.  It was really a challenge to build a panel using all opaque glass.  My usual method is to think about both sides as I work, and this time I concentrated on the top side only, completely disregarding the back of all the glass.  You would think it would be easier, but it really wasn't.  But when I held it up in the light, it was even more beautiful.

we will frame this one to hang on a wall without backlighting.  It is my homage to Vincent van Gogh's painting, with my own variations.  Next I think I'll try one of his sunflower paintings - nice and bright and summery! 

I used a lot of Uroboros and Kokomo, and a few Spectrums.  Lots of ring saw work because of the extreme textures and curvy lines.  I welcome any questions or comments.

photo at last

 

Here's proof that I really have been working on this panel, when I'm not shoveling snow!

It's about 3/4 done, as far as glass cutting and foiling.  the overall size is about 18"h x 40"w.

Then on to soldering (you can see I have already tack soldered some of it), framing and the Big Flip, rinse and repeat.  Bob is going to make a nice wooden frame for this one and we are going to design the hooks so that it will be a wall hanging, not a window panel.  

Pretty bizarro, huh?  Vincent is turning over in his grave, with delight I hope. 

post-blizzard update

Blizzard over, no power outage this time. 

I've been getting lots of email with snow jokes.  maybe by May I will have a sense of humor about this...

meanwhile back at the studio, doing many many tedious teeny pieces to depict the village and surrounding trees, and I will be so happy to get back to the sky, the fun part!

I took a couple photos last night, but they turned out so blurry that I'm not going to publish.  I will try again in the morning when I've got sunlight.  I keep promising a photo, are you all beginning to doubt me?  I don't blame you, but I promise that I am working diligently and that tomorrow you will see progress.

zglassgoddess

one snowstorm done with, only a few inches to clean up this time but very heavy.  still plugging away at the glass panel, with not much progress.  hopefully by the end of today I will be able to post a photo that looks like something.

weather says we are getting another blast, starting today and going into tomorrow.  we are ready - stocked up on staples at the grocery store yesterday and Bob just got more diesel for the tractor.

we lost power for about 5 hours during the Saturday blizzard, but thanks to NNEC we had heat and electricity back on before any catastrophes.  I've taken the frozen stuff out of the frig in the garage and put on the deck; it's so cold that the frig isn't working properly but the outside air is keeping the stuff nice and frozen.

enough snow talk, down to glass business.  this panel is really a piece by piece project.  I am working in three areas at once, trying to get a feel for the overall  color scheme.  I am using so many different colors and textures and hoping it will not get too confusing, but keep to the spirit of Vincent's painting.  The stars are a huge pain - a center orb of bullseye sunflower yellow with two concentric bands of lighter yellow  spectrum, for a total of 7 teeny pieces of glass... and you know the rule:  the smaller the piece the more work it is.  anyway, you can see for yourselves when I post the first photo.

back to the grind...

Another snowy day but at least there's sunshine.  making progress on Starry Night #2, but not ready to post a photo yet.  I am not following my usual procedure, breaking all rules, and it's terrifying.  At Bob's urging, I am making this one with the thought of hanging it on a wall, not in a window, so I am strictly looking at the "primary" side and not even thinking of the back side or how light transfers.  feels really weird and I don't know if I like it; my favorite part is trying to visualize the light transference.

not enough coffee yet... more later