She takes in a cautious breath as her fingertips gently wrap around the paintbrush, delicately brushing in hues of colors to her artwork on an unusual canvas. The usual white linen stretched over a wooden frame was instead a thin piece of glass, clear and shiny, waiting to be completed. Glass painting is a unique form of precise artwork. Although one side may appear messy, its true beauty shines when flipped.
Freshman Lilian Al-Husseini is a self-taught glass painting artist. “I was scrolling on TikTok one day and I saw a person making a glass painting and it looked so gorgeous,” Lilian describes. “From the back it looks really messy, but when it’s turned to the front it was so clean and pretty.” Over the course of three years, she’s prided herself on the progress she’s made from her first to last piece. Years of progression have demonstrated improvement within her expertise, as well as her life altogether.
Perfection isn’t always the key. The seeping, unrealistic expectations students put themselves under on the path to be flawless only damages them in the end. When she first began glass painting, Lilian says it’s impossible to ignore what the nature of learning is like: making mistakes. Yet, she understood that “if [she] messes up, I could try to redo it or focus on the future so that I could do it better.” Through her experiences with shattered glass, paint seeping to the wrong area, and pens breaking, they’ve taught her that it’s okay to make mistakes. When she began learning, she knew she didn’t need to be perfect. It was the glass, fragile steps she took that helped her achieve what she wanted to accomplish in her artworks.
Bringing out a sparkle in her eye, glass painting offered Lilian a newfound enjoyment. “I had no interest in a lot of things. My only interest was drawing, but even then I didn’t have the move for it,” Lilian recounts. Looking forward to her next glass painting project was a way to relieve the pressure of school from her shoulders, triggering a heartfelt happiness.
Painting without regulations holding her back, “[she could] paint whatever [she wanted] for [herself] and put it in my room and hang it up. I could do it for myself and have something beautiful out of it.” The dynamics of her artistic attributes are only increasing as shades of color dance its way into a masterpiece.
Her improvement kept her talents afloat, tracing her sketches with a watchful eye, keeping a unique form of painting alive. Reversing her strokes on a white canvas, glass painting adds the technical complications that come with deciding the order of what to paint first. With her years of expertise, Lilian offers advice for people who are just starting to learn how to glass paint like she was years ago. “Even if the first time it doesn’t look nice, just keep doing it over and over again. Don’t get worked up about not having it perfect the first time.”
Through her years of practice, she has learned one of many valuable lessons behind art: it doesn’t have to be held to high expectations or be perfect. She hopes that art will lead its way into her future, like her passion for architecture, as she aspires to continue her loved hobby when entering adult life. As her glass template gains an identity through intricate strokes, her shining works continue to illuminate smiles and inspire others to partake in this extracurricular activity.
