

A contemporary iconographer speaking:
“To produce a very good icon, the icon-painter ought to adhere to ancient procedures. In old occasions, the traditional background for icons was gold leaf or silver leaf. Gold being high priced, icon-painters normally used uncomplicated paints that were inexpensive and created of organic components. Within the poor village churches of Russian North, all of the backgrounds have been performed with paints of very light color. ‘Fon,’ the Russian for background, isn't a Russian word. Our icon-painters known as it ‘the light’. Priming for the panel was produced of sturgeon glue, also an incredibly costly material. Properly, in old occasions icons have been not cheap… “ (Father Zinon) Get more information about иконописная мастерская в москве
Icons are religious images painted on wooden panels, typically made of linden or pine wood. Their production is a extended and complicated process. A layer of linen cloth soaked in sturgeon glue is put on the panel. The ground is created of chalk mixed with fish glue. This really is gesso. As much as ten layers of the gesso are applied more than the cloth, or pavoloka . An outline of the composition is incised on the gesso with the point of a needle, normally based on an icon-painting manual.
To prepare tempera paints, mineral pigments are mixed with water and egg yolk. The typical minerals are cinnabar for reds, ochre (iron oxide) for yellows and lapis-lazuli for blues. Organic minerals give transparency to colors. Transparency is key in generating the effect of luminosity in icons. Light and dark tones of distinct thickness are brought one on major with the other, layer immediately after layer. The white ground reflects light falling on its surface back by way of the semi-transparent tempera. The effect is the fact that of inner light radiating from the image.
Immediately after painting is performed an icon is varnished with boiled linseed oil, olifa. Russian artists added amber to their olifa. The linseed-amber varnish protects icons from scratches and gives them a deeper tone. But, soon after quite a few years in a wood-heated church or inside a candle-lit ‘red’ corner of a peasant hut, the varnish becomes quite dark and obscures the image. Within the early twentieth century, to clean the old varnish off the icon surface, restorers used fire to soften the olifa. They put a little alcohol on the surface of an icon and set it on fire. A restorer then was able to scrape off the olifa varnish and clean the icon.





