Tiffany Style

The word 'Tiffany's' is practically synonymous with expensive diamond jewellery and also perhaps, with a 1960's Audrey Hepburn sporting a bouffant and pearls! However, the founder of the renowned Tiffany & Co. (Charles Lewis Tiffany) should not be confused with the subject of our Artist Master Class ~ Louis Comfort Tiffany. Louis (who was actually son to jeweller Lewis) chose not to follow in his father's footsteps and sought his own creative outlet on a different path.

Born in 1848 Louis Comfort Tiffany started his artistic journey as a painter, but later turned his artistic style towards the decorative arts. His first commission was for a leaded light window in New York which he designed and created using a wide variety of experimental glass techniques. This piece was both original in design and in its use of innovative techniques. Tiffany continued to work closely with highly skilled glassworkers experimenting and developing new types of glass as he established his glass furnaces as part of the Tiffany Studios in New York. One of his experiments led to the creation of a beautiful, marbled glass which he named 'Favrile' (a variation on the term 'fabrile' which means 'hand-wrought'). His techniques enabled him to revolutionise glass making and consequently the production of his stained glass windows. As such he was able to create a distinctive 'painterly' style of stained glass designs ~ these were far removed from the traditional method of stained glass which was made as flat single coloured panes and then hand painted to create the intricate patterns and drawings.

In this tutorial we will study a piece of Tiffany glass as we recreate his unique style. Most of Tiffany's pieces were inspired by nature ~ which was one of the key themes of the Art Nouveau period which was prevalent at the end of the 19th C and into the early 20th C. Using nature as his inspiration, Tiffany and his lead designer Agnes Northrop created many landscape pieces and it is one of these which will be our inspiration.

To begin we will study the Magnolias and Irises window which is housed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (right).

We will start by looking at the overall design and how each piece of glass is shaped to create stylized forms. This piece is made using Favrile glass and within each individual pane you can see a variety of colours.

Then we will select similar hues from our palette as we try to recreate the sunlit glow in the sky. To capture the luminosity of the glass we will layer transparent colour and create new hues as the two colours overlap. This is a great way to get to know your colour palette and to learn how to mix different hues. I will also show you how to find out which of your paints have the best transparency ~ this will help you to keep your colours luminous.

Layering and mixing colours on the surface will form our main technique for this tutorial which is quite apt as Tiffany used similar ideas to create his multi-coloured glass.

Once your colours are selected you will draw out your window design using a permanent fine line black pen to represent the lead work.

Once complete I will show you how to apply colour into the separate pieces as we build up the sky.

We will continue to add colour, building up the different areas whilst thinking about our use of colour and altering our techniques to achieve the subtle colour change of the lake and the multi-coloured petals of the irises.

Throughout the tutorial I will show you how to achieve more vibrancy or more muted hues in your painting just through your selection of colours. This is a great opportunity to discover how your use of colour can affect the overall mood and atmosphere of a painting and is an idea which you can take with you as you create your own work.

To find out more about this tutorial take a look at the short video below:

I hope you will try out this tutorial as you can achieve some really beautiful effects as you mix your colours on the surface of the paper.

Fun fact ~ This tutorial is actually an updated version of a tutorial I taught my watercolour students around 10 years ago! I fondly remember how beautiful the paintings were and it's for this reason I decided to bring this one back as a new addition to my online watercolour school ~ some of my students class work can be seen below.

Remember you don't have to paint all of the painting ~ you might like to select just a section of it to try out the techniques. Alternatively you could research other works by Tiffany and create your own version or perhaps go one step further and use one of your own photographs to translate into a stained glass design!

I hope you enjoy it.

Happy Painting!