Have I mentioned that I LOVE stained glass?

1st in a series; The SecondThe Third

I had only intended to do ONE "series" of pictures of the five characters of my comic "The Story From Hell", but then this ambitious idea popped into my head...

And it all started with this image of Gabriel that stuck in my mind for some reason every time I heard the song "I Palindrome I". That's why he's the first (and yes its a "he", a very pretty he He's an angel!)

I didn't know if I'd be able to pull it off at first cause I had NO idea what I was gonna do. Luckily I went online and found some good examples of stained glass windows. Here are some of the pictures I studied to figure out how to make it look:

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As for the design itself... all I can say is... thankyou photoshop shape tool! I would NEVER have been able to do this on paper (I'm terrible with patterns.. and typefacing ). I think I'm out to prove to myself pictures done almost entirely with the computer CAN still be art. I would never have been able to do anything like this before photoshop (Though I've been using it for some time)

Though this still took some artistic ingenuity.

The outline itself didn't take a whole lot of time to ink (it took me a few sketches to get a pose I was happy with though) but the real challenge for me was staying that simple. I hadda keep reminding myself what would be done with it when it was scanned.

I colored Gabriel entirely with a spatter brush to give him that sort of grainy quality figures in stained glass windows have (and I added some noise filter later as a finishing touch)

Then I just used the shape tool to create the "framework" of the window (as for Gabriel's dark outline, duplicated layers of him with color overlays). And for the glass? Overlayed colors using some of these awesome celtic knot brushes I downloaded somewhere. I know it wasn't here on DA and I forget where, I aqquired them in a download spree most likely. I used some of them as brushes and some as patterns, but they gave the overall look I needed (see you don't always need to use things as they were intended in art).

Overall I think this is VERY successful.. and I can't wait to do the other four

Oh ... but one more thing.. I .. really.. don't know Latin I'm pretty sure "Archangelus A Clementia" Says " Archangel of Mercy" but I can't be sure (just going by English-Latin dictionaries) so if anyone knows if I messed it up please tell me