Figures & Models

Here’s a quick run-through of the process I use for the figures. First, a section of my cartoon for Trinity Episcopal with the little Chinese girl (actually, she’s 1/2 English) followed by a photo of the model and a snapshot of the glass she will be painted on.

Cartoon

Chirpy little Constanza, my model

Bare-naked glass on the easel
(Ignore the fuzzy horizontal band, it’s just the transom on the window behind the easel).

The separate stages

I do the drawing in 2 stages; a sumi-type calligraphic line drawing in black ink that I photocopy before shading with charcoal or graphite. I keep copies of my line drawings for all the figure, to be used later on for glasspainting, which is also carried out in stages. This slide shows the separate stages: the model, line drawing (we call this the ‘traceline’), cartoon and finished stained glass. Detail of 25ft window for Marble Church in Manhattan, the scene is the Anointing at Bethany.

Woman at the Well, pondering

This pair of images shows just how much the glass is transformed by the glasspainting. On the left, the bare-naked glass was photographed on the light table, hence the flat no-textured rather boring look, but it’s easy to read the tone/value. On the right, the painted glass is waxed up against daylight for the last time before leading-up (assembling into lead cames/strips) so you can see white lines of daylight where the lead will go. The colours are much more accurate in this picture. Notice how the subtle shading in the glass contributes to the overall coherence of the painted picture, even without any lead and all those (Note for Margie -it’s my favourite Lamberts 1067 peach flashed glass.) Notice how the hand and face are all one piece of glass -if I’d added a lead between them I would have lost that pondering look

3 men in a boat

And just one more sequence (yet another slide from a teaching Powerpoint), again from a window for Marble Church. This shows a section of the cartoon, the just-selected bare-naked glass on the easel with blobs of Plasticene, and the completed stained glass.

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