For my "on your own" project, I was feeling inspired by the Día de los Muertos holiday. I'm half Mexican, so I've always had a sincere love for Mexican culture. I'd recently done some explorations of drawing skulls for my Shadowy Skull tutorial on YouTube. So it seemed natural to make a sugar skull out of stained glass!

I started with a sketch of a skull, then made lead lines. At this point is when I added all the fun details and lines. I used these decorative elements to "break up" the larger pieces of glass.

Then came color! This part was so fun.

When I was finished, I decided I didn't like the solid background very much. I wanted to add some lead lines to break it up, like the whole canvas was made of glass. Since it's not really possible to add lead lines once you've added the 3d effects, I had to backtrack a little. I deleted the shading layers and went back to my "reference" leadlines layer. I added more lines to that, then repeated the remaining steps of coloring and texturizing, and adding lighting effects.

The colors came even out better after this! It was a little extra work to go back and re-do some steps, but definitely worth the effort! I love the way it looks with the different shades of purple. This might be my favorite stained glass piece I've made!