Stained Glass Painting Brushes
You definitely need good brushes. But that is not to say you need a lot of them. True, over the years, you’ll amass a sizable collection. But I’ve known people who were forever rushing off to the nearest Art Shop to buy a new brush, when it would have been a better use of their time just to practice harder and take more care of their painting palette.
Here are some very useful articles about the stained glass painting brushes we use at Williams & Byrne. As you’ll soon see, we think it’s crazy to use those insanely long-haired brushes (sometimes called ‘riggers’) which many stockists allege are especially for the stained glass painter.
by David Williams on March 30, 2013
Care and Maintenance
This follows on from a recent post about the 5th benefit of undercoating, and also from “The Beastly Lion of Wolsey Towers” – episode #1, in which you saw how to undercoat a large piece of glass.
Today, cleaning your badger.
This is important because, dirty, your badger will wreck your matts and shadows.
Clean, it will serve you wonderfully for life.
So if your matts and shadows aren’t working, sure: it might be you’re being heavy-handed. All the same, your badger just might need a simple clean.
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by David Williams on March 17, 2013
How can you blend and shade well if you don’t hold this brush correctly?
Not like this …
This is the biggest thing people get wrong when they use a badger blender (the big flat one: not the small round one).
They hold it delicately.
They hold it as if it were a feather duster.
This a bad way to hold it, because your grip is weak. It lacks confidence. It is too gentle. This weak grip makes it harder for you to use the blender quickly and decisively. It makes it hard for you to control the speed and force with which you blend.
It also encourages you to blend from the wrist. Generally, you see, it is bad to blend from the wrist because you don’t want to swing across your glass paint in an arc (which is curved).
Rather …
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by Stephen Byrne on June 8, 2011
If I’d known this when I first started painting glass, I would have saved myself a whole load of heart-ache, time and also – money …
“Known what? Known what? Tell me or …” said the tycoon’s fourth beast (because he’d flunked his “Anger Management” 101)
You may already know that excellent maxim of Francois de La Rochefoucauld – “Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example” – well, the truth is now I’m just too mean to set a bad example.
That’s why today our five long-haul students benefited from a particular piece of hard-won wisdom which I am delighted to share with you.
So, to start: what’s the difference between this …
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by Stephen Byrne on August 22, 2010
Until now you’ve probably had to shop all over the place to get your different brushes and paints.
Which wastes valuable time.
That’s why we’ve got together with PELI Glass Products to make things quick and economical for you.
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by Stephen Byrne on June 26, 2009
Checklist
Here’s a check-list for anyone who’s starting out as a stained glass painter:
- Keep in touch with us – many articles and videos on this site, and we also answer questions
- See below for details about glass paint and mixing bowl, gum Arabic, media (water and/or oil), light box, palettes, palette knives, paint covers, painting bridge / arm rest, jam jars, badger blender, wide narrow brushes, tracing brushes, various sticks, needles, scrubs, kiln, kiln trays and kiln controller
- Read this e-book about kiln-fired stained glass painting - it’s packed with recipes, techniques, step-by-step projects and the kind of common sense you’ll only get by working with a successful studio
- Get the free newsletter – each week you’ll get a quick tip that will help your stained glass painting: join here now [click to continue…]
by Stephen Byrne on May 18, 2009
Doris Cultraro, from Rhinebeck, New York, US, writes and asks us about the kinds of brushes that we use for stained glass painting.
Here’s our list to get you started.
- Wide narrow brushes for undercoats and overcoats
- Blenders – large and small – which are mostly used to move wet paint around on the glass
- Tracing brushes of various thicknesses for different kinds of line
- Scrubs and stipplers to make highlights and texture
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