Everyone assumes the window is the point. It is not. The window is a sieve. The
point is what lands on the floor twenty feet away and slides slowly east all afternoon, and
the point is that you cannot see it until you put something in the way of the sun. Here is a
window. Here is a sun on a string. Rearrange them until you are happy — that is the entire craft,
and anyone who tells you otherwise has never had to carry a finished panel down a ladder.
The four honest steps
Choose loud, then choose quiet. Cobalt is the loudest quiet colour there is; it
will shout across a room and still let you nap under it. Put it where the eye lands first.
Leave a hole for the white. A window with no opal in it goes muddy by three o'clock.
You need one pane that is basically just weather.
Check it against the floor, never against the sky. Hold your panel up and look
down. Amber that looks like honey in the frame can land like weak tea on flagstone.
Stop early. The window is finished one adjustment before you think it is. This
is true of soup as well.