These past several days, I’ve spent time testing an ingredient which, added in small quantities to my usual lump of glass paint mixed with water and gum Arabic, so far appears to possess these helpful properties:

• It slows down the rate at which the lump dries out
• Reduces the time it takes to restore my dried-out palette each morning and post-lunch / phone calls / meetings etc.
• Improves the evenness of my copy-traced lines
• Helps with flooding because the paint is held together more smoothly than before
• Permits crisp highlights and wondrous softened highlights
• Still allows me to do everything else I like to do like ‘ordinary’ softened lines or softened half-tones …

All this is wonderful. Almost too good to be true.

But …