No rest for the wicked ;-)

Yesterday I finished Room With A View, and today I am jumping right into the next project! This one, as I explained yesterday, is a commission which will be a birthday present for the young lady who painted the original. Here is her wonderful watercolor:

I love these colors and the silhouette of the trees. I’m working glass on glass – I think this will be stunning when backlit. The base I’m using is clear glue chip glass. For anyone who might not be familiar with that, glue chip glass can be textured on one or both sides, in this case I only wanted texture on one. Glue chip glass is made by applying hot animal glue to the sandblasted surface of clear float glass. As it dries, the glue shrinks and cools removing flakes of glass from the surface. The point of using it for a mosaic substrate is to have a surface that lets through the maximum light, but helps camouflage the glue bubbles that might result from adhering the tesserae, making it appear neater from the back. I’m using MAC glue because it dries clear faster than Weldbond (which, depending on humidity, can take a long time to clear up). Here’s a close up of the glue chip texture:
So today I started on the tree silhouettes. I’m using nothing but stained glass on this project because I want it to fit into a stained glass frame, and not have bigger bumpy things with sharp edges sticking out of it. Here’s the start of it:

The original painting has a number of spots where the bright background shows through the silhouettes, and I’m using glass beads for that (ok, not “nothing” but stained glass!). Even in the detail shot it’s hard to see them, but when I get dark grout around them, they will really pop. There are both red and gold ones in there.

The next few days are packed with other (non-studio) agendas, so it will probably be early next week before I can get back to it. But Saturday morning I’m going to pick up the encaustic painting for the diptych project and I’ll give you a peek at that when I get it. I’m excited to see it!