Underwater Glass Painting

I'm still using the oil based paint markers from Sharpie to paint on glass. A good friend gave me a large piece of glass and I got some Martha Stewart glass paint and silk screens on clearance and decided to give it a shot. I wasn't sure what to paint but had recently purchased a mermaid stamp @ Michaels, and one of those kids scratch engraving kits (for the pen they include because I heard it kind of catches the scrapings, which would be helpful when I am using mica to sgraffito on glass) and thought they had the same theme and went for it.

This is the silk screen results. I love it! Not hard to do...although I am notorious about not washing out the screens and ruining them! I made sure to wash them out this time. Such lovely detail! I used MS copper colored paint but it dried rather gold tinted. Considering it was hard to find any other brand of paint for glass that had metallics, I was very happy! The hardest part was the spacing on the sides...you can't see through the silk screen to see how to line it up to merge with the last one. Oh well, no one ever said I was perfect!

Here is the kid's holographic engraving kit all scratched off. I have an aunt who loves seahorses and I thought I would give it to her - I didn't think it was going to be so pretty! :) Might have to get another for me...

And here is the part I freehand copied the seahorses to. Artistic licence, dontcha know. :) I added a few other details, anything I could think of to make it look like an undersea scene. Not really sure about the giant clamshell near the seahorses head...looks like either an egg or a thought bubble. :D 

Here they are next to each other so you can compare. The nice thing about this painting on glass....you can either use paint thinner or a razor to scratch off any paint you don't like and try again. :) I modified this one quite a bit from my original attempt. Some of the plants were painted with actual paint instead of markers, Americana gloss enamels, meant for painting on glass. I used gold paint marker for the seahorses and starfish, and accented it with yellow to brighten it up, or black marker to shade with some fresh gold over it, to blend. Using markers is a little different from using a brush. And I used the tool from the engraving kit to scratch into the paint for texture and to add dark accents, since the glass is dark through the paint.....

Here is the back of the rubber stamp I used as inspiration. I just love this stamp! Her eyes remind me of the drawings that were in the Oz series of books by Frank Baum. LOVED those books! I read them all....But anyway, you can see why I connected the two, with the baby seahorse she's holding!

And here is the part of the painting I did with her in mind.  Her hair could have been a little better but I don't have the thin tipped markers and it's harder to get fine detail. I used some real glass paint here, as well, since the markers I have don't have any flesh tones. You can see the original stamp and a stamped/embossed piece of blue glass I made with that stamp above the painting. (The glass is laying on a towel on my kitchen counter in the pics.) I decided to give her a rock to sit on and I had never painted a rock before (of course, I have never painted any of the other things in this painting, either!) and watched a couple of videos...didn't turn out too badly! At least from a distance. :D This one is an earlier version from the completed piece...I made her thighs thinner (are mermaid's thighs called thighs? :D) and blonded up her hair quite a bit in the final version...I used the same copper paint I used on the edges on her hair and then used a yellow paint marker over top to lighten it up. 

Here it the completed painting, all hung up. One cool thing about this is that it's dry very quickly because the markers dry so fast. I used some glass paint and some glitter paint meant for glass for the bubbles on the critters I added. The entire piece of glass is about a foot wide and 32" tall. It is a dark purpley color with a deep texture on the back, and you can't really see through it, so we decided to put it in this corner behind our kitchen cabinets on the wall instead of trying to hang it with a light behind it. It really brightened up this empty corner! Even though it's dark...:) It enhances the dark cabinets, though.

No, I am DEFINITELY no professional, but I am still happy with it. Especially her face! I was afraid I would have to call her Butterface. :D I wanted to post it to show you you can use these markers on just about anything! I did not bake it because I also used some Lumiere paint on her tail and I am not sure you can bake it at temps needed to make the paint permanent. Still need to do some investigation. I don't plan on washing it anyway and it should hold up to a damp sponge once in a while!

Here are a couple of closeups. You can see the blue streaks of glass paint on the top one...doesn't show up well on the dark glass but makes a nice wet effect.

Here are the seahorses. You can see a better shot of the rock...so proud of that rock! :D And my little Nemo...and friend. :D And yes, I know those are not water plants but I liked them anyways. Hehe.

Thanks for looking - make sure to stop by my Pinterest page to see a lot more of my creations, and please like my Facebook page, Karmic Confetti!