Remember Bradford and his amazing talent....

This is an article that I posted last year and it is well worth re-visiting. Bradford is known and loved by all our readers and we appreciate the fact that he follows our blog weekly--and can always be counted on to leave positive feedback for new artists that share their work with Gallery Glass Class. He makes light of his work and his OCD tactics toward imperfections, but the end results speak for themselves. The seascape is timely--just before the last holiday of the summer and the peacock is one of my favorites. His quilt design projects have been described in the comments to Cindy's post, so I thought it was a good time to bring them to the forefront. If you haven't had the pleasure in the past--meet Bradford through his wonderful Gallery Glass interpretations.

I'm not often bowled over by some one's Gallery Glass, but I love to be impressed. Bradford set me back on my heels with 3 of the most amazing panels I've seen. I'm going to tease you a bit by showing you one--at a time. They are definitely worth the wait. You may have read some of his posts on the blog since our launch. He's been a fan of Plaid's Gallery Glass since QVC days and has become quite an avid collector of Gallery Glass books and information. Here is what he said when he sent these beautiful pictures.

"This is Bradford from down in Alabama. I have spoken to you on a few occasions on your Gallery Glass blog. The reason I am writing is to send you a picture of some of my projects I have done over the years with GG. The black bar you see in some of the pictures are from the window casing that I had placed the paintings in for sunlight. I hope to get back to doing some more paintings soon. I want to try doing some more quilt patterns in GG, as well as possibly a few mandala designs. I hope you can get a place on your blog so that we can all post our pictures as we do our projects." 

(His suggestion became the Artists' Gallery category and is a forum for many of our bloggers to share their work.)

This is living proof that you can take one of our patterns and reproduce it at home. If you don't believe me, look at the original in the Framed Art category. Actually, I like Bradford's better because I was demonstrating a set of new iridescent colors that we had introduced and it came out quite opaque. I like the transparency of this panel. Remember the dark bar is the window mullion.

I love, love, LOVE this idea--a Quilt designs-- which he mentions in his commentary. This piece has at least three notable features: first, the lace that he attached to the edge of the panel for framing --love that! I also like the "stitching" that he accomplished with Liquid Leading--great idea. But my favorite is the coloration, the background is not colored as you would normally think of painting it. Very Creative, Bradford, send us more for our new Artists' Gallery.

A bit later in the year Bradford shared some more beautiful projects with us. You may notice some distinctive differences in the project on the left. I'm not positive, but I think that I recognize a special effect produced with the Gallery Glass pebble texture panel that was included in one of our Anniversary kits in 2000. However, you can get a similar effect by painting directly onto pebble textured clear ceiling panels. They come approximately 24" x48" and provide a nice large surface for painting that can be cut up into smaller projects. These two projects were originally 8"x 10" patterns. And regarding painting on ceiling panels, paint on the smooth side, that will give you even, uniform color, but the overall appearance (now with texture on the back side) will be uniformly bumpy. Plus, it is a lot easier to comb and tap when you paint on the smooth side. Painting on ceiling panels is a very inexpensive way to source a larger project surface. Because they manufacture millions of them, the retail price is very low, compared to buying custom cut clear plastic plastic panels that have the masking on both sides. And if you have a recessed lighting fixture in a room, such as a basement or kitchen, you can actually put the panel in the light fixture for an interesting decorative feature. However, you need to put the bumps up and the painting facing down into the room, so that the painted surface will not overheat. 





On a different note, here are two totally different roosters. One is textured like the Dogwood/Bird panel on the left above. The other has an interesting addition to the Gallery Glass painting that will give you lots of new ideas for embellishing. He used dried flowers at the top and bottom of the panel. I'm not sure if he added them before--or after the paint was dry. Tell us all, Bradford. If Roosters are one of your favorite collectible motifs, you're going to see that you are only limited by your Gallery Glass imagination. I must admit that I flipped the image of the one on the right so that it could be facing the other beautiful foul--something that you can do to the pattern before you begin, if you are creating a set of panels to match. Thanks, Bradford, for widening our horizons with your beautiful projects.