September 06, 2005
Stained Glass, Day 2
Friday was the second day of our stained glass class and despite some serious anxiety, I came out well. She launched us into our first project, a flat window no smaller than 18" sq. or bigger than 24" sq. utilizing at least 3 different types of clear glass, 30-40 assembled pieces, and an original design (points taken off for a ho-hum project).
The part that worries me is the design part. Let's be honest--I am not an artist. Crafty? Sure. But real art? Nope. I can't draw to save my life. After showing us various projects, some of which were amazing, we had to go out and sketch some potential drawings. I sat for a while before I had an idea and then I sketched it out. At that point she explain what was "cuttable" and what wasn't. Straight lines and gentle curves=cuttable. A circle out of the middle of a piece=uncuttable (at least for beginning students). I then took a look at my first drawing, the one I liked the best, and realized that practically the whole thing was uncuttable. Depressed, I doodled some more, and then went back to the first one and messed with it some more to try to make it cuttable. The teacher came by to look at it and determined it feasible, so I was off.
Then came the next challenge--transferring my design from a roughly 3.5" by 7" doodle on paper to a 12" by 24" design on pattern paper (a stiff paper used as a pattern). Naturally I hadn't drawn the thing to scale--so transferring it to the big paper is going to be a challenge. By the time we left, Kevin had his entire design on pattern paper and I was still fooling with my drawing, trying to get it to scale. I'm going to have to finish enlarging it this week because a clean pattern is due Friday for class evaluation.
My greatest concern was having the worst design in the class, thus revealing what an artistic dolt I am. However, that fear was put to rest when I saw a classmate's drawing. Her drawing looked just like a screen shot of Donkey Kong (sans Mario and the monkey):
Except her lines were horizontal and totally bisected the window--one of the things our teacher told us was unwise because it created an area where the window wanted to fold and would be a "handling problem." I'm not sure how the woman resolved her problem, but she was also told she didn't have enough pieces. I admit I was relieved--no matter what I do, this woman will always be worse than me.