Designing and Painting Workshop Peli Glass

As part of my 5x week exploration of stained glass in Europe, I was invited to teach a workshop for Peli Glass in Zoetemeer, a suburb of The Hague, looking at principals of design as they apply to stained glass and glass painting in particular. It was a small workshop, with only three students, but no less exhausting for that.

We began on the Friday evening with a slide show and a session examining basic design through additive composition, the results of which can be seen in the group photo above.

Saturday morning kicked off with a series of quick sketches in brush & ink and then charcoal (above) to loosen up and familiarise themselves with the still life, the subject of a longer study in graphite and/or charcoal.

The students were then set the task of converting this drawing into something that could be cut out of glass, all the while deciding what is to be painted and what defined by leadlines.

Once the glass had been selected and all cut, students then placed theglass assembly over the original long study and began to paint the trace line.

We were certainly lucky having a well-equipped workshop to work in. It
meant that several firings could be accomplished in a day as well as
overnight. This allowed for another exercise to run concurrently, something much more free and experimental.

There wasn't time of course to actually build the panels but I was certainly pleased with the results and each student went away with a head full of new ideas and techniques. And I continued on my journey, catching the train back to Amsterdam to see firstly the Rijksmusem, then Cobra and Jan van der Togt Galleries before catching a train to Paris for 12x days.

My whole European sabbatical was structured around this workshop at Peli. It was the trip of a lifetime, with enough inspiration & photographs to fill twenty blogs!