A Christmas Window

Is this a painting or a picture of a window? It might be a little hard to tell, because when Joni painted this Christmas picture, she wanted it to look like a stained glass window. Can you tell what things she did to help it look like this? The first thing she did was to use lots of dark lines. In stained glass windows, each color has to be a separate piece of glass and each piece of glass has to have a frame to hold it.

The dark lines in this painting look like those frames! Another thing Joni did was to use a lot of light colors. The lighter colors in this painting makes it look like bright sunlight is shining through the colors. Can you think of another way that Joni helped to make this painting look like a stained glass window? She used the style of art that many stained glass windows have!

Do you see the big circles around Mary’s head and the head of Baby Jesus? Many years ago, those big circles were used by artists to show when a person was holy. And that is when a lot of stained glass windows were made!

–Joni Eareckson Tada