Just to Prove I’m not a Dinosaur …

So glad the post on blistered paint (and how to stop it) went down well with everyone – thank you for letting us know!

Now Ron Prondzinski made a really useful comment about Reusche’s water-based painting medium (D1368).

My response was:

What special uses does it have e.g. why use a manufactured medium rather than just plain water which we can all get from the tap?

And also:

We’re not dinosaurs but … we haven’t tried it yet -

"Me? I'm not stuck in my ways!"

Now you know how it is.

Some days you just have to take a good long hard look at yourself.

And you just have to ask yourself, “Why haven’t I done this before?”

Maybe I am a dinosaur?

So we gave it a go.

And here’s how it went …

Reusche’s water-based painting medium – nice!

David placed two teaspoonfuls of Reusche’s Violet of Iron on the palette. Made a well in the middle. Then used the shaft of a brush to add some D1368 – just enough to make a thick paste, all ground together with the palette knife.

Next he cut off a small amount of paste and, elsewhere on the palette, and mixed this with neat water to a nice consistency.

Then away he went:

On bare glass

As you can see, you can make many different densities and thicknesses of strokes with it – yes, you can even flood with it.

You can also use it as an undercoat, then dry it e.g. on a radiator, and trace on top:

Also good for undercoating, copy-tracing and reinforcing

Not only that, but it’s also great for highlights:

Lovely highlights

The one thing we couldn’t make work was “softened lines” – you know, where you paint an undercoat, then copy-trace and reinforce a line, then apply a second wash and turn the traced lines into shadows.

Even with the addition of gum Arabic, the traced lines and undercoat broke down altogether. This may be a failure in our technique or it could be the medium just isn’t made for this.

But it really doesn’t matter if softened lines don’t work with D1368 – it’s great for other things:

It’s gives you the elegance of working with a brush as if it were a nib or pen at the same time as behaving very much like an oil.

Which is wonderful.

Unlike water, it dries out extremely slowly on your palette, which lets you focus on other things

And it’s easy to “model” a line e.g. to make it thick in parts, thin in others, or dark in parts and light in others: very useful.

Here’s the kind of image I reckon would work really well:

Bird design - good for Reusche's water-based medium D1368

And if you’d like a high-resolution PDF of this design and another one, please just click and download these stained glass bird designs with our compliments.

Free! Just click here.

Thanks for the comment, Ron!

All the best,

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