Reverse Glass Painting

I bought an unfinished box at a craft store a while ago; you know, one of those cheap ones made of pine and with the crummy hinges and latches.  I think this one was supposed to be 'finished' by the home crafter as a jewelry box.  Well, I promptly butchered it.  I busted out all the interior compartments, removed the hardware, and I attached the top and the bottom 'lid' so I can build a sliding drawer to go in it.   I think that I will also build on all the trims and add some legs.  The main reason that I bought this box (as I am pretty much breaking down and rebuilding everything), is the pane of glass which is inlaid in the top lid.  It looked like....a new place to craft, muahahaha!!!

So I had an idea to make a reverse glass painting, collage, gilded...thing.  Ultimately, I decided to paint the birds and the eggs on paper, so I could get better detail and rendering.  There is a long history of reverse glass painting, but seeing really good examples of 'technical' reverse glass painting is fairly uncommon.  All the rules on how traditional painting works have to be abandoned.  Either you blend in one layer of paint or you layer many layers of compositionally identical paint.  The take away message is that you can mess it up without a lot of practice.  Practice wasn't going to happen here. 

Collage it is!

Since a sizing would need to go down for the gold leaf, I decided to use the sizing as my adhesive for the paper.  Paint went down first, then size, then paper, then more paint, then more size, and lastly the gold leaf.  Okay, I admit, I am not using my real gold leaf here; this is just the composition stuff.  Besides the fact that I am not using the good stuff on something that is just for my personal amusement, the composition leaf oxidizes beautifully.  I really like how it tarnishes into this chatoyance and iridescent rainbow.  Sometimes it pays to be cheap.

I think that I am going to carry through the idea of a 'Nest Box' on the inside, both in decoration and even with objects.  I have quite a few bird eggs and I think that they might enjoy a home in here.

Back to work!

Some general background on reverse glass painting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_glass_painting

And my main complaint on the wiki page above, is that they don't mention the most famous modern use of reverse glass painting.  The Blue Rider Group, a sub-unit in German Expressionism, really embraced the tradition of Bavarian glass painting (in addition to their other traditional revivals) and made some lovely pieces.  So here is a basic overview on them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Rider