Flying the Camel

In the last post I covered all the work I completed on our stained glass workshop at Herston Stained Glass in Orkney. Because of the time the cement took to dry, and to avoid spoiling the work I took the part finished piece home to finish off.

First step was blacking the lead, (Having cleaned out the last excess cement)

This makes a world of difference, and really brings the piece to life, but I was far from finished. I had planned originally to recreate the safety rails of the road that runs over the barriers with paint, but Angela magicked up some self adhesive lead strip. Stripped down to half it’s width it creates the perfect railing I think

What I did stay with in the paint effects was the tumbling blocks of concrete that form the backbone of the barriers. The first step was to draw some designs on plain paper till I got the effect I wanted. Then I laid the piece, with the facing side on the paper.

The design was then copied through using acrylic paint in a pen dispenser, a neat piece of kit, but it does require practice to get the right effect,

With the blocks painted in, there is a waiting period to let the paint dry completely before adding a backgound wash, in this case of light grey

Hard to see the difference against the white paper, but here is the finished piece, seen as it should be

I am very pleased with the finished piece, A wonderful reminder of our stays in Orkney, and a precious keepsake.

This year, whilst on our annual holiday on Orkney, beloved and I revisited Herston Stained Glass, run by the lovely Angela. We discovered this little joy last year, and bought some of the wonderful stained glass she makes. But, this year we went to take a course in stained glass making, you can do 1/2 day, 1 or 2 day courses, at the end of which you walk away with your own crafted piece(s) of stained glass. Beloved and I have done stained glass before, and thoroughly enjoyed it, so were really looking forward to getting our hand back in, as it were, and make some new pieces. Since last year the thought that has been rattling around in my head is to do a piece representing the churchill barriers, one of my favourite locations on the islands. whilst waiting for the holiday to come around, I had spent some evenings drawing up various sketches, with the favourite being this.

One of the major elements was to use a magic lantern slide to represent the blockships

Whilst on holiday, and in conversation with Angela via email I simplified and finalised the design to remove the clutter and capture (I hope) the ambiance rather than a strict visualisation

Come the day we arrived at Angela’s studio on the sunniest morning of our stay. Obligingly she suggested we make the most of the weather and come back the following day, when rain was forecast. We were happy to agree and had a thoroughly nice morning with a cliff top walk, followed by a beach picnic.

The following day, back with Angela started with me cutting glass (From a wonderful selection) to size. It took a few minutes to get back “Into the groove” but I was soon cheerfully scoring and snapping.

Angela has worked with magic lantern slides before, so had valuable experience to pass on. I hadn’t realised, for example, that they are mad up of two sheets of glass, with the image on the inside of one, for protection. Also that before framing I would have to re-join the two (Cut) sheets and bind the edges to protect against moisture ingress.

She also had the correct glue to repair the illustrated sheet which snapped as I was laying out the pieces, due to it’s thinness. Perhaps strangely I feel the damage and repair enhances, rather than detracts from, the whole piece.

With all the glass cut, the next step was to make a jig (To keep the pieces square) and start cutting the lead canes to take the pieces of glass

The original cartoon serves as a useful guide for this part of the process. Above is the point at which we stopped for lunch, so by very early afternoon I had all the pieces cut and laid out

Again, the soldering was a technique I had to ease myself back into. The soldering on this piece is not my best work, but, again, I feel it enhances rather than detracts.

With the piece soldered (Both sides) and reasonably sturdy, the next step is the really messy one, of applying the cement, to secure the glass panes rigidly into the frames. Angela has her own mix, to make a drier cement for ease of application and quicker setting. That said, even with the generous addition of the “Magic” drying powder,

Handling the piece was forcing some of the cement out of the joints. In order to not undo the work to date, Angela kindly provided blacking paste, cloths and over materials needed to finish the piece when we got back home. It was always intended to be completed there as there was detail I had decided to paint in after the construction work was finished. I will pick up these finishing steps in the next post.

By the way, I was not idle having had to stop at this point. I was taught how to copper foil, and had time to make a small piece from a magic lantern slide of beloved’s and some pieces of old church glass from Angela’s Stock.