I get asked this a lot so I thought I'd add some pictures and show you some before and after shots.

It's like painting with sugar--dry sugar, both powdered and crystalized.  That is about the consistency of the glass that I use to paint with.  The colors are muted in powdered form so it's hard to know what you will get.  Colors don't blend like watercolors--blue glass stays blue, yellow glass stays yellow--except of course if they react to each other in which case they may turn brown.  Yeah--it's kind of tricky. There is the occasional one that works well--but we'll save that for another post.

I have tried to use liquid mediums available to mix the powders but did not like the way they seemed to blur the lines.  I wanted crisper lines.  Hence dry powders--and business cards.  Yes that is my most used painting tool-- I move the powders around with a business card.  Depending on the edge and the angle, I get different depths of glass and size of lines.  Use carefully though.  You don't want the corner indentation of the card in the middle of Longs Peak. I use alot of other tools as well--sifters, palette knives, brushes and often my fingers.  Whatever I can to get the shapes I want.

I try to use the techniques I learn in my watercolor classes with Dennis Pendleton--same principles modified to  work with the medium.

To get distance, I use the same principle of less definition far away moving to more definition--that can translate to larger pieces of glass in the foreground or more brilliant colors.

Shading is also challenging.  Instead of mixing a darker shade to get shadows--again the mixing problem, I have found that most often it works to add more layers of the same color instead of trying to mix.  By changing the angle of the business card I achieve shading as well--steeper angle, lighter shade. Here's what Crested Butte looked like before it went in the kiln the first time.

Here's what it looked like after it was completed and mounted on aluminum.

Thank you to the lovely couple from Minnesota purchased this piece.

Well that's overall how I paint.  Firing the pieces is a whole other science--and another post.