The Cherubs have been colored with stain and enamel, and have been delivered back to Bonny Doon Art Glass where they will be added to the oval dome ready for soldering and installation.I'm sure they are happy to finally get their wings, as being a floating head can have it's downsides.
Pictures are of the finished heads on the light box, and waxed in place on the side of the dome mold. I took that picture from an angle so you can see the curve of the glass piece. The paint is placed face down (so the owners will see it on the inside) but note the blue eyes from the back look weird as I enameled and stained the back side of the glass. This is done for many reasons.
Stain always is brushed on the back side of glass, as it has a tendency to 'metal' (go metallic looking) which obscures the glass and image. It does this because silver stain is indeed made with silver nitrate, so it can kind of turn to metal in the kilning process. The enamel can be painted onto the front or back of the glass, but is kind of a hit and miss firing process. By painting the back in this case, it gives the faces a glowing color from behind, and if the color turned out all wrong, I can just acid it off and start again. If I had layered the enamel on the front on top of the paint, and the color came out wrong - I would have pretty much ruined the whole piece, and many hours of careful painting, so that is why on this occasion I painted the back!
There! That was the technical bit. Check out the dome picture too, for the great custom yellow bevels used for the angels wings. You don't often see colored bevels, as colored plate glass is fairly unusual, and I think the colors work great with the finished heads. What do you think?
