Thursday, October 27, 2011

Painting glass

Amber Glass Ornament 6x6 oil, copyright 2011

One of the things on my "bucket list" is to learn how to blow glass.  It's amazing to see a glowing, gooey glob on the end of a pipe turn into a work of art using only fire and air.  I still remember the first time I watched a demonstration of someone making a large serving plate by blowing a globe, then folding it together and spinning it to shape a disk.  Over the years since I have slowly accumulated a collection of handmade glass items, mostly ornaments.  This particular one is my most recent acquisition, picked up this fall at the Renaissance Festival.

Glass and water are two very challenging subjects to paint.  They are transparent and opaque at the time time and can be a confusing mess of reflection and refraction.  The light and shadows feel right on this one, but I haven't quite figured out how to portray the slightly transparent quality accurately.  Water gives me the same sort of fits - how do you paint both the surface and below the surface at the same time?

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