It flips over the spatula to prevent paint from accumulating on one side. Bruce can now either scrub the ink in a pile and start drawing, or move it to a jar and use it from a jar for slow drying. He tries not to hurt himself with paint and if he does, he is immediately cleaned. He ends up washing the tray with more clove oil. Be sure to clean it well so you don't have any paint on your hands.
Painted beads
In this example, Bruce will show you how to draw an image with vitreous glass paint on a small plate that can then be built into a fused bead. It starts here with a face on the left, the size of which is suitable for glass. To simplify the process, it makes a high-contrast black-and-white plyphoscopy of the image. Then he puts the image on his light table and puts a white piece of glass on top of it, as in the second photo on the left. The edges of the glass have been lightly ground to remove any sharp edges that could cut the fibers on his brushes. Bruce then prepares the ink for the drawing he mixed and put it in a jar for use. He has to give it a light cream consistency so that it flows out of the brush or metal drawing pen that he will use in this example. To dilute the ink in the can, he adds one or two drops of clove oil at a time and mixes the ink with his masticheen, as in the photo in the center left, checking the consistency of the mixture each time. If it spreads out or breaks on the glass, rub it more. It lowers the handle into the paint to collect a small drop on the underside of the needle from the tip to the small hole in the top of the split. He checks how well the ink flows from the pen before he starts drawing the image on the glass, as in the fourth photo on the left. He will check this every time he lowers the pen into the ink to make sure it flows right before continuing. Bruce begins to transfer the image to the glass, circling the outer edge of the medium width line. In the lower left and upper right photos, he applies a wider line to the mustache and beard area. It controls the width of the line by the pressure it exerts. In the second photo on the right, Bruce completes the tracing in black and now switches to the mode of reworking what needs to be removed (excess paint). First, it changes the tonal qualities of the beard area by applying wet paint with a dry handle to produce fine lines and black gradation. Bruce dries the excess ink before removing it. It is important that you keep the paint dust from drying, otherwise, it may absorb the surrounding paint and leave a little space. It dries the paint by placing the glass in its annealing, on a hot plate or under a light bulb. The clove oil evaporates at 120°F, leaving the paint tightly bound behind. When the darkness of the trace dries, Bruce may scrape off the excess paint. This can be used to narrow the lines or to continue to reduce the tonal area. Dry handles, needles or wooden needles are good tools to work on tracing lines. In the photo on the right in the center of Bruce uses the back of the dry handle to scrape off the edge of the line to refine it. To avoid scraping too much and not getting too thin a line, it sometimes stops to remove dust and see how it progresses. He often scrapes off excess ink on a paper towel, which he often changes. He doesn't want to carry dust in the air because of its toxicity. In the fourth photo on the right on the previous page, he uses a handle to process sharp parts at the point where the pupil joins and the upper part of the eye. For an area where he needs to remove more paint, such as in the ear of the last photograph on the previous page, Bruce switches to a skewer to erase the paint. In the top left photo, he uses the sharp edge on the back of the pen to further change the tonal areas of the beard. He erases most of it, trying to get the transitions of darkness into the light he wants. Once all the modifications are made, he launches a black trace in the furnace up to 1300 * F to glue it permanently to the surface of the glass. The second photo on the left shows the finished trace image. Now it's time to mix the brown matte paint to give your face color. In this example, Bruce uses a brown blister. He prepares this pigment in the same way as he did the rough trail.
Here he starts with a pre-mixed batch, which he scooped out of his jar for storage on a different palette of ground glass. He uses different palettes for each color. In the photo on the left in the center, he dilutes the mixture with a little more clove oil to make it flow better from his brush. He then mixes it well with his tassel until it becomes beautiful and smooth, as in the fourth photo on the left. Bruce then scoops up all the paint with his spatula so that he can fill up his brush by curling it into the paint, as shown in the bottom left photo.