Drawing on grey card by Ray Ward 2019, 840 x 590 mm
With projects put off during lockdown, I’ve turned to something I’ve been wanting to do for ages - that is the interpretation of one of Ray’s black and white drawings in stained glass. People have often suggested this would work, and the narratives in his recent series of large drawings do remind me of some of the things I really like about medieval stained glass. Thinking of those panels that tell a story, I chose the drawing above, where there’s a lot going on, for my first try.
Bottom section of Ray’s drawing with blacks and whites reversed.
I decided to make the glass panel square and quite small - about half size. I knew I wanted to do the three foreground figures in dark red flashed glass with the lines sandblasted out and the other colours followed from there (below left). I was pretty pleased as the first few pieces came through the painting and sandblasting processes (below right), but then things started getting over complicated.
Left, coloured glass pieces cut: Right, some of the pieces after firing and sandblasting
Left, all the pieces after firing and sandblasting. Right, version 1 finished
I finished the panel (above). I’d removed all the shadows from the original drawing as well as the figure squished in between the front three and had put the seated figure on a little bit of pink glass. I also thought the trees would make a good decorative border. I finished the panel and thought I’d sleep on it before chucking it in the bin. The next morning, Ray agreed “It wasn’t up to my usual high standards”, so I took off all the bits I couldn’t stand and replaced them with nice bits of dark grey streaky glass.
Version 2 finished, 280 x 260 mm, shown in the window in natural light.
Conclusions:
If in doubt use dark grey glass
Simplify even more than you think you need to
It’s easy to do a good bit of detail, but getting the composition right is hard.
Detail of version 2 shown on the lightbox (which is very scratched).