This commission was just wonderful.

The clients wanted their window to reflect the limestone landscape of Farleton Knott, that they lived at the foot of. As well as be colourful and abstract.

They liked sunsets…bright colours… glints and grykes… thyme… and bees. (sorry, they did not get bees!)

I made lots of trips to the great limestone hill… looking..drawing.. walking .. exploring. And did a number of on site charcoal drawings which i so flipping enjoyed. (Oh my, I wish everyone wanted limestone i thought). And from those i came up with a real imagined landscape to suit the proportions of their opening. This involved lots of mark making, standing back, adjusting and squinting… at my workshop walls! The life drawing classes that I attend at the Brewery Arts Centre have really improved my observation and drawing skills. It felt great to transfer skills that I have learnt there into confident lines and lead line composition.

And then it was time to have fun with colours.

I visited Pearsons Glass in Liverpool to search for the perfect piece of sunset glass… and I found it in the Lamberts section. Absolutely beautiful. I knew in my minds eye that I wanted the orange sky to be unpainted.. just lovely clear transparent glowing colour.

The limestone and the landscape was cut from a variety of handblown English Antique Glass that I had picked up on previous visits to their factory, and Tatra machine rolled handblown glass. All in all a beautiful colourful selection.

Glass cutting was carefully done, one piece at a time and waxed up on to the easel to check the colours. Streaky purple wasan absolute delight next to the orange sky. And the slash of bright yellow for gorse separated the layers of rock from grassy thyme foreground.

What a joy it was to paint. Trying to mimic the marks and tones that I had achieved with the charcoal.

And then the part of the process where i really relax into it. The building and assembling. The grouting and polishing and fitting.

Here, fitting with my grand brother, Duncan Copley. The panel had been encapsulated within a double glazed unit and Duncan had to do some fine adjustments to the existing window frame to allow the new unit to fit.

A job well done tho. And there it glows!