Using Arterial red question

[John Arnott]

I've done a piece of chipped glass with bright gold outline and then a black
outline. The panel it is in has been painted with 1 coat of arterial red. This stuff is very transparent. I plan on 1 more coat, but should I just back up with a regular coat of red that is not transparent? No light will be showing through. (framed piece af art) thanks John Arnott

[Mike Jackson]

John, as always, I suggest doing sample swatches on scrap glass before committing an unexplored technique to a finish piece. We did lots of them before the two projects here. Arterial Red is really Naz Dar scarlet red screen ink (9700, I think), repackaged by Rick into smaller tubes. The appeal of the transparent ink is the ability to let light pass either throuh it (if back lit) or let light bounce off a reflective leaf. You can see the arterial red panel in the top piece, with some faint japanese verigated leaf behind it. We did the same technique in the red and blue lines on the barber pole below.



If you put a layer or two of transparent glazes down, then back it up with an opaque red, it will be basically a dark solid red. With that said, you should try laying down a thin glaze of arterial red, then blending behind it with vermilion to maroon, once it is thoroughly dry. Again, try it on some sample glass. We did lots of tests trying to mix in just the right amount of red pigment to ww window spar varnish to achieve a deep red. If you don't added enough, you will get more of a pink color. We used transparent artist oil paint on the blue stripes above.

We also tested the transparent glazes with different colors and types of leaf, too. They all produce different, but interesting effects.

Test, test, test!

Mike

[Billy Pickett]

...I've discovered that "less is more" w. this red. It's (also) easy to apply it too dark. Like MJ said, experiment.

...Unless the area is sorta small, I prefer to spray it on to achieve a "brushless" look.

[Catharine C. Kennedy]

Mike-
What did you use as size behind the glazing? Water gilding or varnish? Or just stick the gold onto the damp paint?...
Thanks!

[Larry White]

John-
I've done this effect and backed the transparent color with metalic silver spray paint. It gives a great "candy" color. It brings out the vibrancy in the color and is very easy and quick to do. I always like to also backup the silver spray paint just for protection.

[John Arnott]

I forgot about back up with silver. I'll double coat due to streaks in the first coat then back with bright red. Thanks everyone John

[Mike Jackson]

Catherine and all,
I know we brushed the red and blue stripes on the barber pole. I can't remember now for certain, but I think I made a screen for the red panel so we could do all 14 at one time, quickly. Then again, I might have masked over the thicker black edges of the panel and airbrushed the red, but I know we didn't try to brush it on.

In both projects, we waited until the red and blue glazes were 100% dry and cured, then applied quick size and surface gilded with Japanese varigated leaf, followed by another layer of the same.

As with all the projects, always did a lot of test pieces so we could make sure we didn't ruin the whole job. So, in this case, we would have screened a couple extra pieces of glass with just the red glaze. Then we could test to make sure the size wouldn't lift or attack the glaze. If it did, we would have a few options, such as shellac.

The goal was to end up with 10 nearly perfect final pieces, plus two aritist proofs, so we normally started with 18-20 pieces of glass. Some of those would get rejected right off the bat because of scratches, some get ruined along the way because of mechanical errors while screening, or any one of a thousand other reasons.

Mike