patron saint of the red shoe
painted window in backdoor
spray paint and sharpee on glass
4×8 door with 3×4 glass panel at top

my first painting on a window…

i onced lived in a house that had lots of stained glass, almost in every room. In the upstairs bathroom you showered or bathed in a golden glow from the light of the very large orange.brown.gold simple geometric shaped stained glass window that was just above the back of the toilet and stretched to the top of the raised ceiling.

at the bottom of the stairs was bamboo on a french door with 10 glass panels, i used to sit at the top of the stairs when i would talk on the telephone and look down on the glass bamboo garden below.
it was very simple with clear and green glass, it had to be a great feng shui, it was very zen…..

and then the cutest window, as if stained glass could be cute, but it was, in my closet was a very small window (9×12), it was different round bottle like bottom circles, different sizes, a large red one, and red stained glass is said to be very expensive because it has gold mixed in, and a smaller green one and a blue one and then clear ones that had different textures, one was bumpy with lots of little round circles like clear marbles, one was frosty and the circles set in clear and frosty textured glass, with waves and with squares, with every trip to the closet i made and effort to look at the art glass.

and the two front bay windows had stained glass borders, squares and petals in the corners with long lines of color interrupted by colored diamond shape symmetry…

i fell in love with stained glass, the way it would change the light and color of a room was almost magical, and throughout the day the shades and hues would change in this monochromatic dance of light as the sun rose and set, bringing in more or less light and disfused or vibrant color with each passing hour. It also provided privacy, like a colored glass curtain you never had to open or close.

since then i’ve longed to live in stained glass windows, but lacking the skills and the funds and let’s face it, not having the patience to wait for them either, i began to experiment on the windows in my home with “faux” stained glass.

the first was starting with a sketch on the glass with a yellow highlighter, and then i outlined it with a black sharpee, the sharpee came out a little too opaque and gray for my taste, so i made a stencil and used black spray paint to get the hard dark outlines of the designs, the black that would frame and outline the color, this worked out great, and for the “colored glass” i used different colored markers, from your basic kids marker set, brush style markers and colored sharpees, highlighters worked surprisingly well. After all the coloring i spray sealed the markers with clear spray varnish. I made sure to do all of this on the outside of the glass so there would be better ventilation while spraying and while it dried. i loved how the first one came out.