A Cross-pollination demo--Windows!

Hi all!  I needed to do a demo for the class I'm giving--people kept asking about how I painted the windows in the old mill painting at top-- but I don't have time to make a video or figure out where to upload a PDF, so I'm going to aim them here!

...and by the way, I just painted around, carefully, here...

 

So first, I just sketched a normal double-hung window...

 

And then painted around the window and sill...

I added a little contrasting spatter for texture, using a small oil-painter's bristle brush and my finger.  And yes, I always get it all over me!

Then I carefully added some of the shadows...I pushed the color a bit...

...and added the curtains.

Finally, I painted in the dark shadowy windows and added a suggestion of reflections when that was dry...but basically, just painted around, no mask, no scraping, no lifting.

However!  You can do all of those things...there's no right or wrong way to paint windows.  Observation is your best tool...there are so many different kinds of windows, you just need to pay attention to what you see, and experiment a little.

Here, I scraped through a damp wash with the end of an aquarelle brush to lift the lights...the one on the right, I just left spaces for the crossbars or mullions.

...and then went wild with a bunch of other techniques!  My Crayon didn't work that well, so I tried a piece of candle wax--and ended up lifting the pigment off the crayon lines with a damp, clean brush and blotting away the extra color. (That's a bamboo pen applying liquid mask at lower right...easy to clean once the mask is dry.)

See what I mean?  You can't really say how to paint windows, because there are literally dozens of different kinds...I did quick sketches of a few I found in an old book on English cottages...

So here are a few of the ideas to try on some simple windows...there are many, many more. 

There are quite a few different approaches to windows in my Travel Sketch set on Flickr and a few more in my Urban Sketches set, as well as some duplicates. 

Ready to try a nice Louis Comfort Tiffany stained glass window??

Me either!

And you're right, this isn't journaling, strictly speaking, except I did the demo in my Strathmore Visual Journal... :-D