Today I went back to something I enjoy painting the most - stained glass. And because today's challenge was 'up close,' I chose to paint an closely cropped section of a Tiffany stained glass window. I did the painting in acrylic since I needed it to dry fairly quickly. However, if I was painting a larger piece that I could spend more time on I would probably have done it in oil. Oil paints work particularly well when trying to blend the many colors that are often used in stained glass work because they take a while to dry and therefore allow more manipulation of the paint.
However, if my painting looks streaky, that was done on purpose. There are many different types of stained glass that stained glass artists use to create different colors and textures. Some may be one solid color, but often streaky or opalescent glasses are used to create windows, especially when creating flowers. That allows multiple colors to overlap and blend so there is more variation in the piece. The other type of glass I was trying to capture (and not as successfully in this case) is called fracture and streamer glass. This is achieved when chips of colored glass are laid out before a clear or lightly colored glass is poured over them, creating a sort of confetti look. Needless to say, it is not my favorite type of glass to try to recreate. But thankfully in this case those sections are not too distracting from the flowers, which are the main focus of this piece.