How to Make a Faux Stained Glass Painting

Is It Easy to Create Faux Stained Glass Art?

Have you ever tried to make a stained glass masterpiece? I also haven't, but I have stumbled upon the wide world of faux stained glass painting—I love it! It's a very uncomplicated form of painting that is removable and reusable on glass surfaces. If you have children or students, it can be a fun and safe craft for them because the materials are water-based!

• You can place your works of art on glass surfaces such as windows.
• Since they're reusable, they can be removed and replaced.

Even adults can release some stress by creating works of art for glass vases or dressing up a window that may face toward a not so spectacular view. However you choose to display them, they are sure to be a hit with family and friends. It doesn't matter if you're an artist or not. Here are some steps and ideas to a successful faux stained glass look!

What You'll Need

• Gallery Glass paints
• Glass
• Liquid leading
• Nutpick
• Paper towels
• Pencil
• Sheet protectors
• Straight Pin (optional)
• Tape
• Toothpick

Tracing Paper

1. Find an Image

Find what you want to paint or create your own drawing. I suggest starting with something that has simple lines. If you can't draw, don't worry. Find something that catches your fancy, and print it out.

• If what you are printing is too small, use a copier to increase the size of the picture. That way, you can trace it to create your faux stained painting.
• If you cannot find an image with simple lines, take the detailed piece and place a sheet of tracing paper over it. This way, you can choose the main lines and make a simplified drawing of it. This is what drew me to this form of art: its simplicity.

2. Place the Drawing on Tracing Paper

If you haven’t already, trace your drawing on a sheet of tracing paper with a pencil. Even if I create my own image, I still trace it on tracing paper. Place your picture inside a sheet protector. If the tracing paper is too large, fold the excess down over the top and tape it down. It helps keep the image in place. You may have to fold the other sides to fit the tracing paper inside.

Note: There are also aids called leading blanks that allow you to place your image on them to apply your outline and fill in your color. However, you get a limited supply, and they cost more than sheet protectors. The sheet protectors are a cheaper way of doing the same thing. I have not used the leading blanks, so I really don't know if there are other benefits to them.

3. Apply the Outline

With the liquid leading, trace the lines of the design. To get the liquid leading started, take a pair of scissors and cut the tip maybe 1/8 of an inch. You may have to use the tip of one scissor blade to poke it deeper into the hole if you have issues squeezing the leading out. You want it big enough to allow the leading to come out with ease.

1. When first starting, slowly squeeze until liquid leading begins to peek out.
2. Place the leading on the sheet protector to avoid the leading from curling up on the tip of the bottle.
3. Elongate the line of leading before following the outline of your drawing. This allows the leading to stay in a straighter line once you begin tracing with it. If you stay too close to the page when pulling away to make a line, you risk breaking the line of leading.
4. Do small sections at a time. In time, you will be able to make longer and neater lines.
5. Once you complete a section of outlining, dip down the tip of the leading bottle to the paper protector and pull up until the line disconnects.
6. If you find a line you’ve made to be a little crooked, take a toothpick and nudge the leading to where you need it to be before it begins to set. Don’t use the tip of the toothpick to do this. Just kind of sideswipe it.

4. Wait for It to Dry

Wait. It will take the liquid leading about eight to 10 hours to dry. In the meantime, choose the colors you want to use for your picture!

5. Add Color

Once the leading has dried, you’re ready to fill the color!

1. Take the tip of the color bottle and place it up against the leading line.
2. Trace along the line, making somewhat of an outline within an outline.
3. Then, fill in color moving from left to right.
4. Use a toothpick or nutpick to smoothen the color from left to right. This evens out the level of color and helps eliminate bubbles.
5. Rake over each color, section by section, as you go along. If you're working with an outlined object with multiple compartments, trying to fill in every section first and then raking over the colors will likely not end well. Sections may already start drying, making it hard for you to eliminate the bubbles and potentially causing you to pull up a section you worked so hard on.

At times, you may not want one color and want to blend a bit. Placing colors in the same space and dragging one color into the other can give a blended or highlighted appearance if mixed with white or a lighter color.

Note: In the video, you might see the outline of the flower's leading move. This is because I constantly picked it up and reused it to test. If I apply pressure to it, it will still stick to a window.

6. Wait Once More

Wait. Depending on the size of your painting, it can take from 10 to 24 hours for the colors to completely dry. After about eight hours, you might be able to look at it to see if everything is dry.

7. Peel the Painting

Peel away what you have painted from the sheet protector and stick to a window or mirrored surface. Awesome, right?

Reverse glass painting

Reverse painting on glass is an art form consisting of applying paint to a piece of glass and then viewing the image by turning the glass over and looking through the glass at the image. Another term used to refer to the art of cold painting and gilding on the back of glass is verre églomisé, named after the French decorator Jean-Baptiste Glomy (1711–86), who framed prints using glass that had been reverse-painted.^[1] In German it is known as Hinterglasmalerei.

Captain Joseph Huddart - Chinese reverse glass painting from c. 1785-9.

This art form has been around for many years. It was widely used for sacral paintings since the Middle Ages. The most famous was the art of icons in the Byzantine Empire. Later the painting on glass spread to Italy, where in Venice it influenced its Renaissance art. Since the middle of the 18th century, painting on glass became favored by the Church and the nobility throughout Central Europe. A number of clock faces were created using this technique in the early-to-mid-19th century. Throughout the 19th century painting on glass was widely popular as folk art in Austria, Bavaria, Moravia, Bohemia and Slovakia. Unfortunately, during the inter-war period (1914–1945) this traditional "naive" technique fell nearly to a complete oblivion and its methods of paint composition and structural layout had to be re-invented by combining acrylic and oil paints. A new method of reverse painting emerged using polymer glazing methods that permitted the artworks to be painted direct to an acrylic UV coating on the glass. The unique under glass effect retains a curious depth even though the layered painting on the glass was bonded to a final linen support and now stretcher bar mounted after being carefully removed from the original 'glass easel'. Current glass painting may disappear with the advent of using aerospace mylar as a preliminary support.

How to paint glass objects photorealistically

Wanna learn how to paint glass objects in a photorealistic manner?

Glass objects (like jars, drinking glasses, eyeglasses, tumblers etc) are amongst themost challenging things to paint in a photorealistic manner, because you need to capture both the solidity of the object, as well as the transparency of the object.

How can you accomplish this?

I'll tell you how!

I've painted glass objects in my photorealism paintings several times, both in my watercolor paintings and my acrylic paintings.

I'll tell you how I managed to create that delicate balance between solidity and transparency to make those glass objects appear true to life!

Tips on how to paint glass objects:

Here is a trick that you may be surprised to learn about how to paint glass objects:

Most of the time, you don't need to worry about painting the glass itself.

What does this mean?

Well, you know how glass distorts objects that are placed inside of it, like in the jar of marbles above?

Instead of worrying about painting the glass, focus your attention onpainting the distorted shapes of the marbles (or whatever object you have inside of your glass).

Don't even "think" at all - just paint what you see.

Encourage right-brain thinking!

Often, our logical left brain takes over and tries to dictate what we "should" be painting and how it "should" look.

Therefore the main trick to learning how to paint glass objects photorealistically is to activate your right brain by getting rid of those "shoulds" and instead, paint what you actually see.

So don't even think about the fact that you are painting a glass object. Just focus on color, shape, and form.

If the glass is empty, focus on each specific color, paying close attention to each color shift. Start with the obvious, noticeable colors and then use the glazing process to smoothly blend everything together.

In summary, this is the real key to how to paint glass objects photorealistically:

Be sure to paint what you actually see, and not what you think you see. Part of what makes painting glass photorealistically so tricky is that the brain often tries to dictate what the painting should look like, and that interferes with the visual information that is actually there.

Pay attention to subtle colors

Once you've started focusing on what you actually see, you are now released from the "idea" that you are painting something that should look a certain way. Now you can focus on the actual painting process.

Colors are very important when attempting to capture the look of glass in paint.

Obviously, whites and blacks will be very important when painting glass, as well as various shades of grey.

I have personally never used grey paint, so although it is readily available, I don't really think it is necessary. You can mix any shade of grey that you need easily by using plain old white and black.

Additionally, look closely at the colors that are actually there - are there tints or shades of blue, purple, brown, green, etc...? For instance, in my painting "Posse" that you see above, there are 3 different types of glass objects, and each has its own distinct coloring.

The left one is a cool, bluish grey... the middle one is an umber sort of grey... and the right one is a sea-greenish grey.

Take a close look at the colors of the glass, and be sure to incorporate them into your painting using the glazing process.

Creating acrylic glazes

What is this "glazing process" that I keep mentioning? And why is it so important in learning how to paint glass objects?

Glazing with acrylics has to do with creating very thin layers of paint - either watered down or diluted with medium such as Acrylic Glazing Liquid (this links to Blick Art Materials, and if you make a purchase I get a small commission that helps support this site).
The glazing process is really important when painting photorealistic glass objects. This is what enables you to capture those subtle shades and hues that you see in the reflections. If you want to paint glass objects in a photorealist style, definitely check out my page about creating acrylic glazes!