Friday, April 13, 2012

a fused glass experiment


There's oodles of fun to be had in examining how one image transforms as it moves from one medium to another. I am exploring this with one of the pencil drawings I made last year. So far, it moved from my sketchbook to a colored digital image to a textile, and now...to glass.

Here are the sketch, the textile, and the image I extracted for the glass experiment:


A thermofax copy of the image was made, and I squeegied glass paint through that, on to piece of azure blue transparent glass. The image did not come through in the detail that I wanted. I lost a lot of detail in the hand, so I am not sure the image "reads" as a profile...


There are several ways I can improve this, so I will experiment further. One problem is the limitation of the size of the thermofax -- maximum 8" x 10" -- which made me want to explore ways of layering and extending designs, ad infinitum.  More thermofaxes to make.

This piece has four layers -- the bottom layer is an opalescent white, and on top of that is a clear "cord" (for corduroy?) glass, that I had hoped would add some texture to the background. My image-on-blue is next, and on top of that is a layer of clear iridescent glass. The last layer has a beautiful rainbowesque sheen that appears from any off-center angle:


I may cut this piece up with the tile sawand use sections in other works. I do like what the painted lines are doing.

I can use the thermofax screen again, so I will try to get a better "pull" on the image next time. I like the crop of the face I made for the first photo in this post, so she may appear somewhere again...

2 comments:

Andi Perejda said...

Pam: How thick was the glass paint that you used for the thermofax screening? If the paint is really thin, see if you can thicken it. Another thing to try is to use a paintbrush to dab the paint onto the screen, instead of pulling a squeegee. Also, what type of squeegee are you using?
Andi

Pamela Price Klebaum said...

There really isn't any way to thicken the paint. I used a plastic squeege, probably not the best choice. This was actually the second pull, and the first one was better.

I can try another medium that I just learned about, also. It is very difficult to paint on glass as there is no friction. I have some ideas as to how to experiment with that. I like a very "spirited" line, so I don't want to have heavy painted lines.

This was fun, for sure!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...