light made solid

Since stained glass is such an old-fashioned profession, many glass artists and craftspeople have been slow to incorporate new technologies. Perhaps the rationale is that if medieval artisans could do this work without computers, why can't we? Certainly there's something to be said for the rich history of technique in stained glass. But in our own studio, we've also found a very useful place for computers.

While all our painting and construction is still done by hand according to classical techniques, we've managed to successfully incorporate a modern graphic design sensibility into our preliminary sketches and mock-ups, thanks to computer technology. In general, the more conservative stained glass artists do their sketches by hand. The sketches are miniaturized versions of how the window will look - usually something that can fit on an ordinary sheet of paper. These are usually done in colored pencil, or perhaps watercolor, and then presented to the client for review and further discussion. In our studio, however, we use graphics editing programs to enhance our sketching and initial design process.

Our main programs are Illustrator and Photoshop (both from Adobe), and Corel Freehand. Corel and Illustrator are mainly used to build out our shapes and put together the line work. These programs are vector-based graphics programs. This means that, should the need arise, we can quickly and easily scale our drawing to be any size, and maintain it's proportions exactly. A big benefit in the stained glass game. For coloration and texture, we use Photoshop. It's rich colors and exciting textures allow us to really bring our designs to life.

The other benefit to doing this work on the computer is that we are able to quickly and easily get designs to clients for review. It speeds up the early phase of the window-making process, so that we have more time to devote to all the intricace details of the task of painting and building a window.

For some examples of our computerized stained glass sketches, check out our sketch gallery. You'll also see some fine examples of what are called "cartoons" which are the full-sized drawings we make from our preliminary sketches. These are then used as references for painting and constructing the windows.