Christmas Window painting #1

Saint Attracta's National School - Charlestown, Co. Mayo

From time to time I do art-work in the local National (primary) school. I either try to teach the children art or I draw pictures for them to colour. The pictures they colour are then used as decorations for seasonal, religious and celebration events. 

Since it is Christmas, I was asked to paint the windows of the front of the school. It had been a while since I painted the windows because of the poor quality. But the windows were replaces a few years ago with what you see here. Condensation (moisture) was still a problem, but thankfully it only affected the non-permanent marker. The paint survived. 

An unfortunate side-affect was poor visibility during rainy weather (this is Ireland, after all). On the night of the school's nativity play/ recital, I realised that moisture on the outside of the windows blocked visibility. I don't know how to explain it other than the wet windows made the pictures look blurred and faded to anyone looking at if from outside.

In the past I used proper artist acrylic paint, that kind of paint sticks better to the glass. Because of the nature of the paint, the acrylic turns darker when it dries. That means that during the day acrylic paint on the glass was difficult to see (from outside) but looked great at night (with lights on inside). The cheap ready-mix paint that I used this time meant that it looked reasonably good during the day but not as strong at night. This was made worse by rain that night.

Another problem was that I didn't have a proper marker to help me outline the finished drawing like I do when drawing on paper. I will have to invest in a Paint marker for future work. 

Some pictures of the other windows:

I alternated between this (holly) and Christmas bells along all the bottom windows.

The following pictures were created using A2 (I think they were bigger) sheets of paper stuck together with sticky-tape. They were later painted by the children (and later repainted by secondary school students that were doing work-experience in the school. I really need to teach the kids how to paint! They think they already know how to and won't listen!)

An example of what the pictures looked like painted. I'm not sure who exactly painted this, so apologies for not crediting them.