after all this, how am I to excuse the paradox that it is possible to have the colour ground too fine! All one can say is that you "find it so." It can be so fine that it seems to slip about in a thin, oily kind of way.
It's all as you find it; the differences of a craft are endless; there is no forecasting of everything, and you must buy your experience, like everybody else, and find what suits you, learning your skill and your materials side by side.
Now these are the chief processes of painting, as far as laying on colour goes; but you still have much of your work before you, for the way in which light and shade is got on glass is almost more in "taking off" than in "putting on." You have laid your dark "matt" all over the glass evenly; now the next thing is to remove it wherever you want light or half-tone.
Fig. 32.
How to Finish a Shaded Painting out of the Even Matt.—This is done in many ways, but chiefly with those tools which painters call "scrubs," which are oil-colour hog-hair brushes, either worn down by use, or rubbed down on fine sandpaper till they are as stiff as you like them to be. You want them different in this: some harder, some softer; some round, some square, and of various sizes (figs. 32 and 33), and with these you brush the matt away gently and by degrees, and so make a light and shade drawing of it. It is exactly like the process of mezzotint, where, after a surface like that of a file has been laboriously produced over the whole copper-plate, the engraver removes it in various degrees, leaving the original to stand entirely only for the darkest of all shadows, and removing it all entirely only in the highest lights.
Fig. 33.
There is nothing for this but practice; there is nothing more to tell about it; as the conjurers say, "That's how it's done." You will find difficulties, and as these occur you will think this a most defective book. "Why on earth," you will say, "didn't he tell us about this, about that, about the other?" Ah, yes! it is a most defective book; if it were not, I would have taken good care not to write it. For the worst thing that could happen to you would be to suppose that any book can possibly teach you any craft, and take the place of a master on the one hand, and of years of practice on the other.
This book is not intended to do so; it is written to give as much information and to arouse as much interest as a book can; with the hope that if any are in a position to wish to learn this craft, and have not been brought up to it, they may learn, in general, what its conditions are, and then be able to decide whether to carry it further by seeking good teaching, and by laying themselves out for a patient course of study and practice and many failures and experiments. While, with regard to those already engaged in glass-painting, it is of course intended to arouse their interest in, and to give them information upon, those other branches of their craft which are not generally taught to those brought up as glass-painters.
CHAPTER V
Cutting (advanced)—The Ideal Cartoon—The Cut-line—Setting the Cartoon—Transferring the Cut-line to the Glass—Another Way—Some Principles of Taste—Countercharging.
We have only as yet spoken of the processes of cutting and painting in themselves, and as they can be practised on a single bit of glass; but now we must consider them as applied to a subject in glass where many pieces must be used. This is a different matter indeed, and brings in all the questions of taste and judgment which make the difference between a good window and an inferior one. Now, first, you must know that every differently coloured piece must be cut out by itself, and therefore must have a strip of lead round it to join it to the others.
Draw a cartoon of a figure, bearing this well in mind: you must draw it in such a simple and severe way that you do not set impossible or needlessly difficult tasks to the cutter. Look now, for example, at the picture in Plate V. by Mr. Selwyn Image—how simple the cutting!
You think it, perhaps, too "severe"? You do not like to see the leads so plainly. You would like better something more after the "Munich" school, where the lead line is disguised or circumvented. If so, my lesson has gone wrong; but we must try and get it right.
You would like it better because it is "more of a picture"; exactly, but you ought to like the other better because it is "more of a window." Yes, even if all else were equal, you ought to like it better, because the lead lines cut it up. Keep your pictures for the walls and your windows for the holes in them.
But all else is not equal: and, supposing you now standing before a window of the kind I speak of, I will tell you what has been sacrificed to get this "picture-window" "like a picture." Stained-glass has been sacrificed; for this is not stained-glass, it is painted glass—that is to say, it is coloured glass ground up into powders and painted on to white sheets of glass: a poor, miserable substitute for the glorious colour of the deep amethyst and ruby-coloured glasses which it pretends to ape. You will not be in much danger of using it when you have handled your stained-glass samples for a while and learned to love them. You will love them so much that you will even get to like the severe lead line which announces them for what they are.
But you must get to reasonably love it as a craft limitation, a necessity, a thing which places bounds and limits to what you can do in this art, and prevents tempting and specious tricks.
How to Make a "Cut-line."—But now, all this being granted, how are we to set about getting the pieces cut? First of all, I would say that it is always well to draw most, if not all, of the necessary lead lines on the cartoon itself. By the necessary lead lines I mean those which separate different colours; for you know that there must be a lead line between these. Then, when these are drawn, it is a question of convenience whether to draw in also the more or less optional lead lines which break up each space of uniform colour into convenient-sized pieces. If you do not want your cartoon afterwards for any other purpose you may as well do so: that is, first "set" the cartoon if it is in charcoal or chalk, and then try the places for these lead lines lightly in charcoal over the drawing: working thus, you can dust them away time after time till they seem right to you, and then either set them also or not as you choose.
A good, useful setting-mixture for large quantities is composed by mixing equal parts of "white polish" and methylated spirit; allowing it to settle for a week, and pouring off all that is clear. It is used in the ordinary way with a spray diffuser, and will keep for any length of time.
The next step is to make what is called the cut-line. To do this, pin a piece of tracing-cloth over the whole cartoon; this can be got from any artist's-colourman or large stationer. Pin it over the cartoon with the dull surface outwards, and with a soft piece of charcoal draw lines 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch wide down the centre of all the lead lines: remove the cloth from the cartoon, and if any of the lines look awkward or ugly, now that you see them by themselves undisguised by the drawing below, alter them, and then, finally, with a long, thin brush paint them in, over the charcoal, with water-colour lamp-black, this time a true sixteenth of an inch wide. Don't dust the charcoal off first, it makes the paint cling much better to the shiny cloth.
When this is done, there is a choice of three ways for cutting the glass. One is to make shaped pieces of cartridge-paper as patterns to cut each bit of glass by; another is to place the bits of glass, one by one, over the cut-line and cut freehand by the line you see through the glass. This latter process needs no description, but you cannot employ it for dark glasses because you cannot see the line through: for this you must employ one of the other methods.
How to Transfer the Cutting-line on to the Glass.—Take a bit of glass large enough to cut the piece you want; place it, face upwards, on the table; place the cut-line over it in its proper place, and then slip
