Sandalf Window

I can't really say since when I've been wanting to lean more into stained glass as a visual style to experiment with, but it's been at least three or four years. As you can see, I've still got to work on the realism. But I had so much fun. It was gratifying as hell to be looking at some of my favorite art, just for reference. Even if I had more than a few adjustments to make, I was happy all the way through.

Stained glass, of course, is made from pieces of coloured and cut glass that are fitted together by means of insertion into a leaden bar. Lead is soft, so it can accommodate the specific form of each piece. After some treatments to make it waterproof, the result is a picture that can have shading, precisely painted lines and textures, but that also utilizes the thick, even lead-lines necessitated by its physical limitations. Visually it combines painting, drawing and a very pronounced "ink" element that I wanted to explore, with colours that burn bright when the light is just right. (yo yo those rhymes)

Sandalf didn't even really know what I was planning to do until I showed him more. I'm very happy he let me do my thing, considering I was pretty much ready to do this or something like it no matter what xD Because he's from Scandinavia, I chose to ornament the background mostly with fitting plant life - pine, birch and Lingonberry.

Regarding improvements, I'd say I would like to get a little more specific with the texture of the glass itself, and make it look more like each piece is correctly lit. What I did as a "shortcut" this time was go over the ink layer with a "bristle" type brush, with the colour mixing option turned off. this gave me a layered effect for some of the fuzzy ink borders you may see in the upper part of the image. Looking at how other artists do it, I may however still decide on a totally different process. My initial approach, for instance, revolved around achieving a bit of a blurry effect by duplicating the ink layer and applying a Gaussian Blur to the copy. I'll see how it goes.

I'm also pretty excited about a possible combination of certain elements of this style with my passion for bold inking. Some of the stained glass look may end up in more abstract or more loose and experimental images. As will the ornamentation. I love patterns.