Glass Painting

Let's grab some glass painting here!

Glass Painting

Let's grab some glass painting here!

This art form has been around for many years. It was widely used for sacral glass painting since the middle ages. The most famous was the art of icons in the byzantine empire. Later the painting on glass spread to italy, where in venice it influenced its renaissance art. Since the middle of the 18th century, painting on glass became favored by the church and the nobility throughout central europe. A number of clock faces were created using this technique in the early-to-mid-19th century. Throughout the 19th century painting on glass was widely popular as folk art in austria, bavaria, moravia, bohemia and slovakia. Unfortunately, during the inter-war period (1914–1945) this traditional "naive" technique fell nearly to a complete oblivion and its methods of paint composition and structural layout had to be re-invented by combining acrylic and oil paints.

The glass painting can be realistic or abstract. Realistic reverse paintings are more challenging to create as one must, for example, in painting a face, to put the pupil of an eye on the glass before the iris, exactly the opposite of normal painting. If this is neglected the artist will not be able to correct the error as they will not get in between the glass and the paint already applied. No such care need be taken with the abstract form, but with this form there is not a good idea how the piece will look like until it is finished.

Recently this style of glass painting is gaining fame in its depiction of hindu deities, especially in southern india. These invariably involve a large amount of gold paint and colours, like red and green, for the gem stones adorning the deities. The most prominent step in this style of painting is that the gem stones on the different pieces of jewelries are painted first and then coated with gold to provide the jewelry effect.