Blog
Hello, Vicky here! Some of you will know that I am the Creative director at b small and others may recognise my name as designer/illustrator for various titles in our catalogue. Working in such a tiny team, our roles often cross over into different areas so today I’m here with my illustrator cap on to share my window painting process.
Earlier this year, we were asked by the lovely people over at Bags of Books in Lewes if we would paint their window for Halloween. This would be in conjunction with the release of the second title in our spooky Real-Life Mysteries series ‘Tales of Ghosts and Hauntings’, written by Susan Martineau and illustrated by me. Obviously, I jumped at the chance to do this as I love the books in this series and Halloween is my FAVOURITE time of year, so what an honour it would be to paint a creepy window in such a great location!
How to paint a window
First, after getting the measurements from the lovely Rachel, I set up a template to work out my design. I knew right away that I wanted to include the demon dog we have on the cover – something that we have in fact used on a lot of the marketing for this book. This took a bit of figuring out to make it work across the individual panels of glass.
After sending the design off to get approved, I moved on to the technical bits of the stencil. To be able to trace the design inside the shop, I needed to flip the design and turn the artwork into outlines. Then tile each piece to fit the panels of the window. Once I was happy with everything, it was time to print it out and stick it all together ready for the event.
To paint the window, I used System 3 Acrylic paint for most of the design and Posca pens for the lightning and the text. The Posca pens allow a bit more control when doing things like text and the acrylic works well for the larger areas to be painted. Both can be removed easily with soapy water and a cloth, or in some cases a glass scraper for the thicker areas (VERY satisfying process if you like that kind of thing!) The paintbrushes I used are the Himmlfel Pinstriping brushes for acrylic, watercolour & oil, in various sizes. Inexpensive and I find these great for using on glass. My kit also had recycled yogurt pots for mixing paints, masking tape for putting the stencil up, cloths for cleaning, water and SNACKS.
After arriving at the Bags of Books, my glamourous assistant (my partner, Christian) and I had a quick chat with Rachel over a cup of coffee and met Winston – the most handsome bookshop cat you’ve ever seen. Then it was time to begin. The window had a quick wipe down, so the surface was clean for painting and then we put the stencil up outside. Thankfully, we were in luck with the weather and only had a few spots of rain later once we had most of the outlines already painted.
Stencil up and time to mix the paint we need. I used a very slightly watered down mix of the black acrylic to outline most of what I needed. Then you essentially layer the paint up in the order you need and colour in the design, allowing each layer to dry in between. While waiting for the black layer to dry, I was able to hop over to the text, stars and the lightning (which Christian, my glamorous assistant I mentioned earlier, helped me with) with the Posca pens and then go back to add in the lighter details of the dog design.
There’s a little of that ‘trust the process’ as you’re painting and it’s perfectly normal to think that the inside never looks as neat as the finished result on the outside! The outside is what matters though, and you just try get it looking reasonably tidy on the inside.
Tah dah! A few hours later and after lots of washing-up, our window came to life!
Window displays are important marketing tools. They became more popular during the pandemic as it was a way for authors and illustrators to engage with their local bookshops and readers when events were put on hold. I think it’s such a lovely way to help promote a shop and a book and I am often in awe of how creative they can be. Hoping mine will inspire children to pick up our book or at least get them in the Halloween mood. Apologies for any nightmares and thank you again to Bags of Books for letting us take over their space! Please take photos of the doggy in the window and pop in to see the lovely team if you’re in the Lewes area this month. They have copies of the book along with free goodies like posters and bookmarks to take away.
Happy Halloween!
