You can read the rest of this series here.

Fall term classes are almost over, but we’re still drawing up a storm in Basic Drawing, moving on to tougher projects. Last week we focused more on shading and drapery, which had been giving me lots of trouble. Our instructor, George Tkabladze, helped us a lot with that. He gave me a lot of hints, most helpful of which was how to erase the highlights of the folds to make it look a lot better:

In Stained Glass, I quickly finished grinding a few final pieces, then washed them all to prepare for the copper foil. I spent the rest of the class foiling, and took the rest home to finish as homework, so that I can solder this week! The copper foil, in a technique credited to Louis Comfort Tiffany, is applied to the edges of each piece to give the solder something to adhere to. They make copper foil tape with adhesive on the back that makes it pretty easy to do.

Here’s my classmate Liz’s project — a mirror frame — all foiled as our teacher Jimmy Powers demos some soldering tips for us:

Looks pretty good! And here’s what my pieces looked like before I started foiling:

I think the colors turned out great, and the brown parts, which don’t really show up in the photo, are particularly good-looking. (Here’s what the “root beer glass” looks like.)

This week will be, unfortunately, our last Basic Drawing class. I have a couple more Stained Glass classes to go as well — stay tuned for news from both!

— George