Welcome to My Christmas Paintbrush ~ Blog

Welcome to My Christmas Paintbrush

Holly painted on window glass - Image M Burgess

This begins a blog dedicated to Holiday Window Painting - and the tips and tricks I learned in over 30 years of decorating window panes for the holidays.

My art gets me call backs for decorating  window glass with paint year after year. I enjoy this hobby very much and hope to help you enough so that you can too! With the season comes a ton of images you can paint. As your skills grow,  you can create unique designs for temporary seasonal displays. In time if you have the necessary talent and some drawing skills, painting on window glass will become not only a great way to share your artistic side it can become a great part-time business.

Be creative and learn how to adapt any design into a special request by your clients. You should be ready and willing to draw and paint anything into a window design because you WILL get some unusual requests. I have drawn pets, Santa in all kinds of interesting scenes, and some odd business related designs over the  years. 

Santa Silhouette in Christmas Wreath - Image M Burgess

I personally cannot do faces very well. When it comes to a Santa I prefer to do something like the wreath above, "Santa's Silhouette". It gives you the feeling you would imagine for Santa's Ride Christmas Eve on his gift-giving mission! This scene is one of my favorite designs because I can combine realistic touches with my cartoony images and set an original painting on the business that hires me. This was on the bottom of a doorway back in 2007. I am glad I started adding a date to my work. It helps track not only the design's date but my progress. I can go back and study this and improve on it or swipe certain features to use in another painting. Every one of the artworks I leave behind is an original and different from the last one.

Get creative. The more you can come up with the more business you will have. Be careful, though, once you get started you are going to be a very popular item of interest at Christmas time! I show up to decorate one business in an office complex and people always ask me to do the next door windows, too. I spend a lot of time trying to concentrate on finishing the job so I can move to the next one. It gets a little complicated so start with your home windows for practice.

You will be able to design your own projects by using some of the hints and tricks I am going to share with you here. Eventually, you will have created your own portfolio with designs you will use year after year. My signature images are kept in photographs and memory at this time. I will be sharing how I have cataloged and recreated some of them. It is a shame that they get washed away with the old year in the beginning of January. I used to almost cry when I had to clean them off the windows! I just look at it as part of the job now.

To get started you will need some paint and a few brushes. But what are the right materials for window painting?

For additional information and inspirational images see:

 So, You Want to Paint Holiday Windows?

www.holidaywindowpaint.com