Lets Trying Window Painting!
For a while now I have wanted to try window painting and was curious on how to do it. I thought if I figured it out it could possibly be an easy side gig. Businesses are always looking for artist to put up stuff on their windows it seems. Especially during the holiday season.
My main job at the moment is a tattoo artist, and we have some big windows to the shop and with spooky season hitting I thought this would be the perfect time to try it out. I had some dead empty days so I took one of them to see what I could do.
First off, I have to say it was harder than I thought it would be. I had a few ideas along the way that I thought if I do it again it would really expediate and streamline the process though. Such as using whiteboard markers for the rough drawing. I had to make it difficult by making it so the image could be seen on both sides of the glass. I know a lot of window paintings I see are usually one sided and built up in layers from what I can tell.
I used an acrylic paint, water, and soap mixture which I kept on over doing it with the soap and water so the paint was a little runnier than I would have liked. For the linework I went back over everything once it dried just to layer it and make the lines more saturated. Then I used a razor blade to refine and shape the lines and get rid of all the drips. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this worked pretty well. I think if there’s a next time, I would like some smaller different sized blades though so I could make more precise adjustments to things. I then cleaned up around the lines with a damp paper towel.
When I moved onto color I didn’t use as much soap and water in my mixture and that really seemed to help things go on better. Still was a little difficult though. I had the bright idea of using foam brushes, thinking the paint would go on smoother. It was just more difficult to control, I think. Especially when I was trying to fill in all the color. But I made do with what I had.
Overall I think I did a fairly decent job and I got things figured out. I would defiantly do this again and would love to try and make a little extra cash on the side doing this for businesses around town.
