The technique of using colored material to filter light isn’t new. Stained glass has been around quite a long time. Its popularity is due to the brilliance of the results. There are several churches in Singapore with beautiful stained glass windows. It could be a fun weekend excursion to find and compare the different stained glass windows in Singapore.
Create a personal art piece for yourself or for a gift.
What you need:
- Black construction paper
- Colored tissue paper
- Glue
- Pen knife
What to do:
- Draw the design you want on the black card making sure that the outline and interior lines in the drawing are very thick. You will be gluing tissue on the reverse side so you need some space on the boarders. Beginners and those with mums who are not as good at meticulous work – try to stick to bigger geometric shapes and designs.
- Have an adult (mum or dad) cut out the pieces of the black card where you want color.
- On the back side of the design, glue the colored tissue into the spaces. Make sure you cut the colored tissue a bit bigger than the hole in the black card so that there is ample space for glue.
- Hang your colored panel in the window with the back facing outside. Hang it where the sunlight can shine through. The effect is similar to stained glass.
- If you wish to cover the back you can either cut an identical cutout and glue it over the back or cover the whole back with white tissue paper. The later will diffuse the light slightly.
The science of light:
Light allows us to see and is almost everywhere in our world. It is amazing and although it is something surrounding us throughout out lives, it is perplexing in nature.
Light acts like most particles traveling from a source. It travels straight unless a force acts upon it to change its course. Light also travels in waves like the waves of the ocean. This creates the rainbow. This quality of wave-particle makes light very complicated and also absolutely amazing.
Natural sunlight contains lots of different types of light including infra-red and ultra-violet rays. These are however, invisible to our eyes. White light is made of all the colors in a rainbow. You can see them all when white light passes through a prism. Colored glass or paper filters the white light to create dazzling results.
Light travels very fast through our universe. Different types of light travel at different speeds. Visible light can travel through transparent objects like air or glass but not opaque objects like cardboard or wood.
Ultra-violet rays cannot travel through glass. You can say that glass is opaque to ultra-violet rays. A totally transparent object is invisible – the light travels through it and does not bounce off anything.
A translucent object lets some light through and scatters the rest. Clouds are translucent. Luminous objects make their own light like the sun. Non-luminous objects do not have their own source of light but reflect light. The moon is non-luminous.
The colored paper is translucent allowing only some light through. In fact it only allows one color of light through. Red tissue paper allows only red light through. As sunlight passes through your artwork with the different colored tissue, only certain colored light will pass through each sheet.
The result is scientifically interesting and aesthetically enchanting.
