The important thing to understand about the nate dogg is he knows how to play casino. Which, I suppose, doesn't really tell you anything.
Are you familiar with casino? See it's a two man card game where cards are laid and subsequently picked up. Know what happens when a guy puts an ace on a seven, then the other guy drops the two of spades to make it a ten then the other guy picks it up with the ten of diamonds? All hell breaks loose. Tables get flipped.
I'm sorry, that didn't actually explain anything did it. I'd send you to wikipedia, but it doesn't actually explain any of the relevant parts of casino. The relevant part of casino is that it's apparently big in jail (though, not so much in prison).
This is really just getting more cryptic isn't it? Let's go back in the story a bit. I can say for sure that I knew nate in junior high and it's possible as far back as elementary school, but it's hard to say. We weren't especially close, but we ran in the same circles, so we saw each other a fair amount. One of those circles included donnyk (is that what I called him before? It's hard to keep the aliases straight). Donny visited jail and brought back casino. A whole lotta casino got played at his apartment. Fast forward some amount of time. I was hanging out at this apartment a lot (crestwood anyone?) and every day I would go pick up nate and we would sit in the kitchen and play casino for hours and hours. Of course the whole time we'd be bullshitting about whatthefuckever and by my estimation, that was when we really became good friends. Went on to be my first roommate, lived with the guy for years, countless misadventures, etc. etc.
THE POINT OF THE STORY IS!
It was no surprise, at all, that he would be the first person to commission a stained glass work. The guy is big up on planes you know and so he sent me a picture, which I promptly lost, but I had some memory of what it looked like and dug up this:
This was a really interesting change of pace for me. I'd been used to just making these things up as I go because I didn't need to have a set end point and since they weren't being necessarily made for anyone it didn't matter *so* much how they turned out. This was different, if someone's putting money down and they have a specific thing in mind, then I need to deliver.
I've talked in the past about how with stained glass, since you're necessarily losing detail, the important thing is to just pick some details you know you can nail, that really define the thing, and go with that. With this picture he had mentioned he really liked the view on the wings, so I wanted to keep them as intact as possible. I broke the plane down as simple as possible, with the breaks mainly being done to allow for some semblance of shading.
As far as the sky went, that's where I added the trademark mosaicyness. I wanted to make sure there was a clear break between the ocean and the sky so beyond the horizon I went with some plain blue glass. Then for the ocean I bought all the different shades of blue that hobby lobby had that I didn't hate and just alternated them.
Quick aside here. In past stained glass posts I've talked about my ongoing quest for a good pattern material. Apparently posterboard+3M 77 is the way to go. Worked like a dream.
Assembly of the picture went a bit different from normal. The typical system is to lay out the whole picture and solder it all at once. Here, since the plane was the most important part, I assembled it piece by piece to make sure that it lined up perfectly.
This worked really well for this piece because the shape of the sky was completely irrelevant, which meant if I needed to alter any pieces to fit around the plane, then so be it.
The last thing that was different about this piece was the framing. The book I got had talked about using cames, which are, I guess, U-shaped pieces of metal that you can use to build a frame. Of course they don't sell that shit at the 7/11 so I'd been out of luck. On a recent trip to the stained glass store however I noticed she had some hidden away. Definitely the way to go and is how all future pieces will be framed I think.
All in all this was probably the most painless window yet. Apparently practice makes something something. This was interesting because I feel like I always say "it looks better with the light going through it and the picture doesn't do it justice." It does look good with the light going through it, really brings out the shading int he plane, but it looks pretty good with no light too I feel.
I know I know, this whole time you've been reading this post and thinking, "Mike, how can I get my very own stained glass masterpiece!?" Well I feel like if you're reading this blog you must know how to contact me, but if not, shoot an email to highjack@fyadiaf.com. Let me know what you're thinking and we can discuss my ridiculously complex pricing system.
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