Turn Any Photo Of Your Pet Into Glowing Stained Glass Art.

Imagine...

• → You’re carrying a wrapped canvas into your mum’s kitchen. She peels the paper back, sees her old dog rendered in glowing amber glass, and goes completely silent. Then she starts crying. You painted that. With your own hands. At your own kitchen table.

• → A friend spots the portrait above your sofa and asks which gallery you bought it from. You get to say, almost casually, “I made it.” And then watch their face change as they realise you’re not joking.

• → It’s a wet Sunday. Phone face down, radio on low, one small pane of colour at a time. Two hours vanish. You look up and realise that for the first time in months your head has been completely quiet, and there’s something beautiful on the easel that didn’t exist this morning.

Here’s A Small Taste Of What’s Inside:

1. Module 1: Foundations. Your Palette, Your Panes, Your First Strokes.

   

   Your first canvas is not your pet. It's this.

   Before your animal goes anywhere near a canvas, you'll build the one practice panel that teaches your hand everything it needs. Six flat panes, light to dark, bounded in black, plus a set of test strokes in the colours you'll use behind your pet.

   • The five supplies that do 90% of the work, so you stop guessing in the craft shop aisle
   • How to mix a six step value ladder from a single amber, which is the entire secret to fur that has depth
   • Discover the flat pane stroke: the loading and laying habit that separates the stained glass look from blotchy acrylic
   • Your first pass at painting a black lead line, on panes it does not matter if you ruin
   • The background test strokes that tell you in two minutes which teals and golds will flatter your animal

2. Module 2: The Outline. Get Your Pet Onto The Canvas.

   

   Photo on the left. Bare contour on the right. Nothing more.

   This is the module that breaks the blank canvas. You'll learn to look at a messy, real life phone photo and pull out the handful of simple contours hiding inside it, then get them onto the canvas at the right size and in the right place.

   • The squint test that instantly shows you which edges matter and which are noise
   • How to break a face into eight shapes, with no drawing ability required
   • A simplified three line grid for landing the eyes, nose and muzzle in the right place every time
   • Learn how to size two animals together so neither one gets crowded off the canvas
   • Why you should keep this stage ugly, and what happens to people who try to make it pretty

3. Module 3: The Refinement. Turn A Flat Outline Into Flowing Form.

   

   The same drawing, now with somewhere for every pane to go.

   Your outline is correct but lifeless. Here you'll push it into something that actually flows, drawing the fur direction through the chest and ruff and refining the features until the drawing already looks like your animal in pencil alone.

   • The directional flow lines that make a chest look like fur instead of a blob
   • How to refine eyes, nose and mouth so the likeness lands before any colour exists
   • Learn where whiskers go, and why you draw them now and paint them almost last
   • The soft pencil pressure that keeps every one of these lines erasable
   • You'll finish this module with a drawing good enough to stand on its own

4. Module 4: The Pencil Map. Halo, Border, And The Last Fine Details.

   

   Still pencil. This is the module that turns a drawing into a stained glass style design.

   Now you'll draft the glass effect itself, and all of it is still pencil. The radiating halo behind your pet, the mosaic border around all four edges, and the pane divisions that cut through the fur you drew in the last module. Then you'll go back into the animals one final time and add the small details that sell the likeness: whisker roots, the fine lines inside the ears, the catchlights in the eyes, the tiny shapes around the nose. By the end your entire painting is mapped out on the canvas and nothing is left to improvise.

   • How to sketch the halo arc in pencil, the radiating ring that does most of the emotional work in the finished piece
   • The border mosaic grid, and the spacing rule that keeps it framing your pet instead of competing
   • Learn to divide panes along the fur flow so the pattern follows the animal rather than fighting it
   • The final detail pass: whisker roots, inner ear lines, eye catchlights and the small shapes around the nose, all pencilled in now while they are still erasable
   • A final map check before you paint, because every mistake is still free at this stage

5. Module 5: The Subject. Paint Your Pet First.

   

   Pet finished. Background untouched. This order matters.

   Paint opens here, and it goes onto your animal only. You'll fill every pane of the dog and the cat with flat colour while the background stays bare canvas, which is the single decision that stops beginners muddying their subject.

   • Why painting the subject first protects your likeness, and what goes wrong when you do it the other way round
   • The warm core, cool edge rule behind every pane that looks lit from behind
   • How to paint a black coat that reads as glossy fur instead of a hole in the canvas
   • Discover the four layer eye, built in order, with the single white highlight that brings it alive
   • How to keep each pane one flat colour and still get depth across the whole animal

6. Module 6: The Background. Build The Mosaic That Makes It Glow.

   

   The same canvas, lit up.

   With your pet locked in, the background becomes easy and genuinely fun. You'll fill the halo and the mosaic with the teals, blues and golds you tested back in Module 1, and watch the whole piece suddenly switch on.

   • The three background palettes that flatter any coat colour, including the difficult ones
   • How to grade the halo from bright at the centre to deep at the edge, without blending
   • Learn the colour scatter rule that keeps a mosaic from looking like a checkerboard
   • Where to put your darkest panes so your animal pushes forward off the canvas
   • How to carry colour into the canvas edges, so it looks finished from the side on a wall

7. Module 7: The Outlines. Final Black Lines And Seal.

   

   Done. Signed off. Ready to hang.

   The last module is the one that pulls the whole painting together into a convincing stained glass look. Your colour and texture are already done, so this is pure line work: every pane gets its painted black outline, and then the whole surface gets sealed so the colour deepens and stays put.

   • How to pull a clean black line freehand, with the simple brace that steadies your hand
   • The line weight rule: thicker on the outside, finer within, and why that makes flat paint read as leaded glass
   • The wobble fix: how to straighten a crooked pane edge with the black line instead of repainting it
   • You’ll learn exactly when to stop, the hardest judgment call in the whole piece
   • The two coat seal that protects the surface and deepens every colour underneath