Glass Painting

[lawn]

So I tried my "painting" with glass. It does work with some caveats. The colors you can make are astounding but very fickle. They will deepen if you have air between layers, disappear if surrounded by glass, and the glass layer facing is slightly stronger.  And since you will have to have air to get all the different strong colors that means the colors change depending on the angle its viewed from. These problems can be fixed with adding non glass blocks to the design or embraced by choosing a painting style like impressionism. Here I tried to do Impression Sunrise by Monet. It uses 3 layers of glass with one air gap.

[lawn]

Two other pluses to using glass for painting, you can create very small pieces and you can make "holographic" pieces. Here's just one block from the painting and you can see it still works and an aquarium just to show an example of a 3D piece.

[lawn]

So Cy9miner covered all the basics already, but I thought I would give an example of how the color changes using my "palette". (I just choose these three random colors here but any 3 would work) So the color can change if along the line of sight there are different glasses touching air or the amount of air touching the glass changes. So in this pic the left side is one pix thick but one pix removed from the wall and on the right side it is 2 pix thick but right up against the wall. So all the resulting colors are tinted more toward that color. The order makes no difference when looking dead on...

 

and the thickness of the glass makes no difference to the color at all, but because we have to have an air gap the skew does change the colors. We have all those fringe colors around each block. The effect is more noticeable here since there is air around each block. So we want things as thin as possible. But we can embrace some skew as well to help with blending. One double thick layer of glass opens up tons of possibilities. And since all the colors come out the same when touching the wall, let's just get rid of that. (but you can certainly use it to dull the color when desired)

 

Now we can do all kinds of tricks. Put the color we want to blend with the skew in the back layer near gaps, add some air in the double layer to create "texture", add an air gap in the double layer to create 3 layers for more intense colors, and all while basically changing a layer of glass or adding gaps to the glass. Then you have an extra slot to add in the occasional extra color or solid for an extra punch.

I can see changing the order of where to put the double layer of glass depending on the type of "painting" one wants to do, and naturally one doesn't have to start with these layers at all to create a glass painting. I just found it easier to keep track of the effect changing the glass color would have for each pixel. Want a bigger color shift, change the back one thick pane. Things aren't mixing well when I look from the side, switch the 2nd and 1st layers. Need a really strong color, remove the middle pixels.

Edited June 27, 2025 by lawn

[Cy9miner]

 @lawnLet me send you something it is a guide I been working on the blending of stained glass. Note it is incomplete and its the first iteration when its done I will post in the forums but I like the work and creativity you are showing and it will expand your repertoire of building techniques. 

[Raiback]

Oh, that's a great idea, i never think about doing custom paintings

[lawn]

Here's another glass painting style that works. Chinese! 

It's a bit tricker because you'll need to keep it flat, so you have to mix in a lot of solid blocks, but you can get it really small this way.

And just because I was thinking about it at the same time, three quick screen designs. The second one is a three layer of quartz-lake-quartz, so may not be survival buildable.

[lawn]

Been working on this painting for awhile now. A version of "Water Lillies".

[BlackMoonHowling]

I definitely need to try making some paintings like this for my build, I never thought to use glass to blend colors

[lawn]

I'm thinking of trying a portrait next. Anyone know a good impressionist portrait that would look good swapped to Saraph colors?

[Stantis]

On 12/8/2025 at 7:58 PM, lawn said:

Been working on this painting for awhile now. A version of "Water Lillies".

This is really unique and a wonderful way to be creative!