The colors brown, tan, red, and amber yellow define the designs of Fall. Detailed and wildly cut leaves dress the season. Trees loaded with these accents adorn roadways and fields. Including them in painted scenes dazzle the eye and imagination. Designing window dressings using these shapes and reminders may present odd challenges. The leaf shapes are curious and wonderful. They may be mottled ot spotted with alternate colors. Edging them with a striking color defines their character.

The scenes above and below each feature three carefully sculpted leaf shapes common in New England fall. Although, this artist has never seen them personally, the images are plentiful on things like greeting cards and seasonal advertising. The burgundy red maple leaf would have offset the yellow and browns here nicely. As is, the rich tan and deep brown lined with yellow hue present a sweet decoration celebrating the cool weather season.

Oak leaf and maple leaves are seen most often depicting Fall. They help accent lettering, corners, and borders in glass window painting. Add varied and plain leaves to the mix and create a sweet scene celebrating the change of seasons. Painted swirling lines give the feeling of falling leaves and a gentle sweep on the window. Who doesn't like playing in a pile of leaves!?

Harvest festivals and Halloween are significant in Fall celebrations. Corn, apples, and pumpkins are ripe for picking and the days change to cooler temps. Our thoughts are turned to keeping warm and stocking our pantry and wood piles for winter.

Pumpkins dominate Fall side by side with this season's colorful leaves. They are squat and square, plump and round, or tall and flat bottomed. The fun of pumpkins is that they can be any shape you want them to be. They can be varied in color from deep red-orange to yellow. Texture is common in the skins. Their leaves twine around them in vining spirals and sturdy stems. The leaf color is a brownish green and they are round in composition. Leave the jack o' lantern faces off of them to stretch the season until winter scenes are needed.

Lettering for Fall season should reflect the pallet colors and define the sentiment offered. Letters should be clear and spaced evenly. A variety of fonts may be used to reflect a cheery greeting unless a spooky one is needed for Halloween.

Lettering is by far the hardest element of window painting. It needs to be even and straight. The height and width need to be matched appropriately and it needs to be level. The artist here uses a font specific to handwriting and alternates the colors of the season. The lettering is then outlined in a bubble border enclosing the greeting in a cloud of letters.

Yellow is a great color for representing the Fall season. Choose this hue for areas that may need brightening because of shadows or for a general seasonal salute. The Harvest greeting is trimmed with leaf clusters to complete the cheery greeting and accent the season.

Learn more about window painting with the artist's tutorial The Essential Window Painting Guide found on this site's homepage. Thank you for visiting!

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I spent many of my younger days watching the monsters of early Hollywood. They were a favorite activity on a late Saturday night. The music and scenery would set the mood for a scary hour or two and possible sleep troubles. It was thrilling watching villain and hero or heroine upon the tv screen. As I got older the films were silly, but endearing. It was just too much fun getting caught up in the story lines.

The Halloween season gives me an opportunity to give back some of that monster love. In a scene I titled Monster Piece, the elements of three of these monstrous characters are painted as dogs dressed for seasonal display. The charming canine monsters are true to their form with the exception of smiles where ghoulish frowns distorted frightening faces. These are happy monsters and creating them affected me in a fantastic way. I get one "masterpiece" a season and so far this is the one. I'll lovingly photograph it inch by inch and render it to canvas after painstaking pencil sketches are made of it. This a way to preserve the design in a permanent manner. Once the holiday is over, the scene is washed away forever.

The dogs are borrowed from the summer seasonal painting I delivered as an initial project. They will be included in future paintings and remain as the store's cartoon family. Tailoring appropriate individual scenes helps the inspiration spiral into unique and fun imagery.

This year marks a pair of firsts for this artist. This is my debut with Fourth of July images AND painting in record breaking heat. As excited as I was to have this opportunity, it was a daunting task and a physical challenge I've not yet experienced. Regardless of the weather challenges, my paintings were completed and the reviews are good. I've just won a new client and dazzled a frequent favorite.

​Ok, so my flag is crooked and the stars are screwy but it fits my painting style. It worked the way it was supposed to and that's the point. Bright and festive images were applied to the focal point of the business and the kids loved it. Besides a small earning with the art, why else would I do this? Putting a smile on a kids' face young or old is a priceless earning...

Ask anyone who has been by my side in a project and they will tell you that I am seriously challenged when it comes to lettering. I am very vocal about it. It is a skill I envy in other artists. It is a talent and a gift for some and nemesis for an artist like myself. Some artists have a knack for it. I do not, but I work with what I can to create an acceptable greeting.

​Here, I've combined cursive introduction and closure with a simple and bold font for the center of the greeting. I crafted this out one line and curve at a time using a marker and yardstick. Line by line, I centered my phrase and filled in a block shape for each bold letter and added polished form as a finishing touch. A simple angle smoothed the blocked letters out and the flares refined the individual letters further. The colorful line decor was done using the edge of the yardstick and a mechanical pencil to draft the lines in a balanced manner. A straight line cut through the entire word and left a guideline to fill with alternating color.

Fireworks are great details to use for the Fourth celebration and in welcoming New Year's. I chose vibrant fluorescent lines and dashes to mimic the firey displays. Prior to creating the motion and shapes, a tooth brush splatter was added in a bright orange. Flipping the paint in speckles and a few splatters as a backdrop helped create the illusion of sparks and bursts normally seen with fireworks.

Odd numbered lines and arcs gave the image shape and flow. I started with seven lines then alternated colors where needed. I'm looking forward to creating more of these and developing a certain pattern template. This whole series was experimental and I'm happy with the way they turned out. The only downside was trying to capture them in picture with my cell phone camera. The reflections on the glass proved to be difficult to avoid.

Do you remember the good old days when scary movies were in black and white or poor color or even more interesting, they were in colorized form? They featured vampires and werewolves. They depicted the monster that Dr. Frankenstein created. They were the creatures of myth and legend and nightmares. They did not need all the gory details to be scary. Just the arrival of the beast on the scene sent shivers down our spines. Hollywood draped sets in spider webs and creepy houses. They built graveyards and castles. They introduced us to the adorable horribles. 

The first black and white vampire movie was  F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) and it featured our beloved Lon Chaney. Chaney went on to play many other roles in the early horror movie genre. Vampires evolved into the smooth styling of Dracula played by Bela Lugosi and fun werewolf children such as Eddie Munster as seen in the 1964 television series The Munsters.
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​Frankenstein was a fabulous monster movie. It depicted a soulless creature that was a combination of salvaged body parts assembled by a mad, but brilliant scientist. It brought raving fans to the theater accompanied by screams of fright. The follow-up tale The Bride of Frankenstein carried on the tradition of Dr. Frankenstein's medicine and introduced us to Elsa Lancaster as the Bride. 

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​Witches have been frightening creatures over the ages. In folklore, they are awful beings known to bewitch and eat small children. One of the worst of and the best of these odd icons are part of the fantastic tale, The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. The Hollywood film adaptation of the book was released in 1939 and is still a family and fan favorite. 

This year, my art has a few featured characters dedicated to these beloved villains and stars. Eventually, they will end up in pencil sketch and on canvas, but for now, they are in my photo gallery and digital portfolio. May I introduce to you the line up of players for the 2016 Halloween season.​ ​​

((I had to change the spelling on my characters. There is a cartoon artist that has a
​collection of artwork named for the correct spelling.)

​I finally broke down and designed a logo for my window painting theme. It took me a few years to come up with a design that was just right and I have recently had it printed on business cards. It is not easy coming up with a theme that describes exactly what you do, but I think this image sums it up perfectly. I am so busy designing things for others that I often leave my own designs on the sidebar for a later project.

The efforts I have put into posting and discussing window painting on the internet have spanned about four and a half years. In this time period, I have written articles, edited and posted images, and published a how-to guide on the subject. It has been a wonderful run of work and a satisfying set of accomplishments, but I am still only in the beginning. 

My next set of goals includes two guides to compliment the one I have already written and a set of images that I can use for commercial purposes. I would like to create a line of merchandise featuring the art I create and for that I have to paint my creations on a surface I can take pictures of. The windows look fantastic when all is said and done, but the images never do them justice. The reflections off the glass or the elements in the background do not make for great quality printing although they are just right for my portfolio. This is another challenge is in the making and that drives me to keep going. 

Logos are a painstaking decision. They have to be just right and contain the elements desired to reflect the business model or idea.

​My friend Chris is an urban farmer in Michigan and we were talking about his goal to be a seller at the local county farmer's market. I thought up a quick theme for his business and posted it for him to use on signs and letterheads. I can do this with a basic design and motif on the computer. If you need something seriously detailed and fancy you may have to look elsewhere. I prefer very simple images. 

The sign logo here would fit perfectly on a banner or wooden sign for a business shingle. It would look lovely on a letterhead or a card and it seems to display a clean, healthy operation.

​My friend will be selling fruits and veggies, flowers and herbs and helping those who inquire about his expertise. My friend is very smart on many levels and it has been an honor to work with him along the line on our mutual passion - gardening. I wish him much success in this endeavour. 

A blank set of windows await their Fall window painting theme

The weather outside is...
delightful when you concoct a scene like this in window painting with people being busy in the snow. It is the season for window painting. I love to create this effect with the snowy slopes and trees. I particularly love painting snow scenes because Las Vegas --where I live -- does not get snow often and when we do get it, the snow is never enough to build snowmen or sled on. We have to go to the mountains for snow play.


There are so many designs you can throw together using the favorites from the holidays, even weather.  I love the goofy look on that poor girl who just fell on the skating rink ice. Did she get pushed or is she just a bit clumsy? 


This set of images is from a doctor's office I have been painting for some time. They love the snow scenes with skaters and snowman building and general snow play.