HOLY HANDWORK: How do I paint an icon?

An icon is a sacred object and has a central place in the worship service of Eastern Orthodox churches. Christ, Mary and saints can appear on it, as well as biblical events. One can make contact with the saint through the icon, venerate it with a candle and incense, touch it, and pray before it. Through the icon, Christ, Mary and the saints are venerated.Christianity originated in the Roman province of Palestine, now Israel, because Jesus Christ lived and taught there. Icons were not created until the Romans accepted. The first surviving icons, from around 550, are related to and as beautiful as the Fayum mummy portraits, also in encaustic. After an iconoclasm in the 8th and 9th centuries, the technique of the icons was in egg tempera.
Many artists have admired these powerful images that have survived the centuries. In the Netherlands, over the last 50 years, many artists have devoted themselves to icon painting and have become familiar with the ancient technique, the distinctive language of form and the use of colour, not to mention the intense mystical aura. The strict rules that apply during the creation process lead to the conclusion that icon painting is a craft and not an artAnyone can paint an icon. I will describe below the stages in the making of an icon, being a theologian and Orthodox, and my church expects me to have a more spiritual attitude.If the result of your icon is important to you, you should stick so closely to traditional materials. How cheap an icon in acrylic paint looks when you hold it next to one in tempera paint! Tempera paint is magical because the egg yolk used has molecules that refract light - just hold it in full sunlight. Prisms!

Choose a panel that is free of knots and resin and is sufficiently kiln-dried. Tropical mahogany and abachi are the most resistant to warping from water absorbed during priming and painting. Glue the board with linen and prime with a semi-absorbent natural "gesso" in about 12 coats. Soak 36 sheets of gelatine in a litre of water for an hour, heat it and carefully sprinkle in spoonfuls of kaolin + champagne chalk until everything settles and you have a paste.The base is sanded and polished with 800-grit sandpaper(fig.).

Get the picture or working drawing (fig.1) from the internet or a book and trace the large areas on the board with graphite carbon.

Gold leaf is available in 8x8 cm booklets fixed on a blotter or loose on a blotter.
Nice is from 21 to 23.75 carats and not very expensive.
For the gilding I use a layer of acrylic bolus (Koelner Kggg-system no.2) which is mirror-smooth polishable, on which I put Instacoll, which is an acrylic mixtion, as a gold glue, and on top of that the gold leaf, which I can rub up shiny with a goggle cloth. With the above gesso or with Kaltkreidegrund I remove the excess gold, because you cannot paint on gold. (fig.2)

The binder that binds the pigments is half egg yolk and half vinegar.
The brushes needed for an A4 size icon are some small sable brushes and a long trencher or letter brush no. 2 of synthetic hair. The icon is from the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Orthodox theologians emphasise the use of natural materials from God's creation.Similarly, the painter-theologian L. Uspensky (1978) calls for avoiding synthetic materials as much as possible. But vegetable pigments are very weak in tinting power. Some of my 10 pigments are mineral-synthetic with a simple chemical formula, often iron oxides and cadmium (which are somewhat toxic). You can't do without a bright red, yellow, white and green. They used to use the toxic ones, lead red and lead white.

You start by colouring the ground planes in fairly dark tones, because you work from dark to light. (Fig.3)

Then you find the lines of the colour plane on the picture, the fold lines, the dark line structure, and put them down. That's picking out.. The Greek style in which I paint has 3 opaque lights or highlites per colour. The lines are the clothesline on which the lights are hung. The first light is barely lighter than the base colour, comparable to a faint sheen. The second light is much brighter and smaller and is placed on top of the first (Fig.4).

The third light, the high light, is bright and barely thicker than a line. The clothes are set up with geometric shapes, such as hemispheres and various triangles. In contrast, the face and bare parts of the body are painted plastically, using intermediate tones at the edges of the lights. In this way, the round volumes of the flesh emerge. (fig.5)

Lacquering can be done in an environmentally friendly way.
Allow the icon to dry for 3 months. With two coats of Lukas silk varnish for tempera, it is finished in a few hours.