Hummingbird & Hibiscus Faux Stained Glass

With the addition of a hummingbird feeder, our house has been blessed with an abundance of the speedy and lovely birds. My wife asked that I create a hummingbird / hibiscus / stained glass painting for our deck.

Prior to this I’ve dabbled with school and sports logos applied on used plastic paneling using model paint. Acrylic paint may work, but there is a translucent quality to model paint that lets light shine through nicely.

Plastic / acrylic sheet

Model paint, brushes, thinner

Permanent marker (wide tipped worked best for me)

Paper and pencil, rulers, and (if you are feeling extra precise) t square and triangle drafting tool.

My wife had an idea of the general layout, and I took this to guide my search for photo references. After finding the bird and flower images, I sketched them on paper and traced the general shapes onto the acrylic.

If you prefer, and have access to a printer or photocopier, you can print the images out and trace them onto the plastic. I’ve also had success tracing images from my tablet directly onto the acrylic sheeting.

A graphite pencil leaves a very faint line on the plastic, depending on the pencil and the surface of the acrylic. For this project I used light colored model paint to trace the outline of the bird and the petals of the flowers.

I did this indoors, and while some windows were open there wasn’t nearly enough ventilation. I wasn’t aware of this until my wife came in to the room and brought it to my attention. Be sure to do this outside or with fans circulating air!

Also, using paint thinner to remove the model paint from the brushes is crucial - both to ensure longer life of your bristles but also to avoid unwanted paint blending.

I’ve found painting both the back surface of the acrylic and the front gives a nice “thickness” or “depth” to the image isn’t achieved by painting on the surface alone.

I also chose the lighter colors of the images for the back of the hummingbird and hibiscus, and planned on adding the shadows and darker, deeper colors later on in the process.

For the stained glass frame of the image, I freehanded shapes. Starting with small shapes, I soon decided to make them larger. It was very freeing to allow my imagination to create abstract shapes for that area, especially since the bird and flower required more attention and realistic depiction.

Letting the paint dry outside overnight, I turned it over and began tracing the stained glass shapes with a large permanent marker. The chisel tip of a large marker worked far better than the smaller tip in creating a bold outline.

I only outlined the small colored shapes and the rectangular border, and saved the bird and flowers for last.

Rendering the feathers of the hummingbird needed a small brush and little dabs of paint, while the flowers looked better with a larger brush and longer brush strokes.

The stained glass effect was best captured by using a slightly dry brush, applying the paint in “streaks.” Matching the paint from the back surface to the front, add just a little of the paint so that the paint on the back is still visible. I found this better achieves the effect of small individual pieces of colored glass.

Going around the frame, I kept adding touches of paint to the front of the stained glass shapes and added additional feather color and deepened the reds on the hibiscus.

Once the paint dried, I used the marker to outline those shapes.

Thanks to all the creators, artists and tinkerers on this website. I’ve been inspired by your work so much so that I’ve decided to share my own. Mahalo!