The Visitation, Iconographers

St. Mary's Episcopal Church Iconographers. Bonita Springs, FL. Feb. 2009
L-R: Sally Watts, Dianne Rowe, Jim Fox, Marcia Hardy, Sally Sites, Joan Warren, Babette Brenton, Pastor Gail Tomei. Absent: Helen Mallon, Bill Kingsley

The Visitation Day 5

What a remarkable week!

Thank you to my group of wonderful iconographers for your faithful engaging of this process. The pictures below were taken right after the icons were varnished, and so the reflection of the flash is rather bright and unfortunate. I hope that we'll have pictures from Sunday's blessing of the icons at St. Mary's.

The Visitation Day 4

Today we painted faces, using thin layers of paint to gradually add light to the icon. The movement of darkness into light is part of the powerful symbolism in icon writing.




The first highlight in "Second Flesh"




The second highlight in slightly shorter strokes, nearer the eyes and center of the face, in Second Flesh and a small amount of yellow light-warm white mix.




The third highlight in shorter strokes still, building cheek bones and facial structure.



And then the "enliveners" that place points of light at the brightest places on the face: above the eyebrows, eyelashes and the corners of the eyes, the cheekbones, down the center of the nose and nostrils, the filtrum (aka sniffle ridge) and chin.



Then the eyes are outlined and highlighted, and the face is outlined in the olive green Sankir (first flesh) plus a small amount of a dark brown paint called "Hair."

The Visitation Day 3

This is Helen, who takes very good care of us and makes sure we never go hungry!

Helen in the Kitchen, where she spends almost as much time as she does writing icons!


It was a good day of icon writing. Drapery and details were the work of the day, and reading the passage from Luke upon which this icon is based. Tomorrow, faces! And the story of the birth of John the Baptist...

And now some pictures of the day. I apologize for these not having names attached to each and that not all the icons are here (one was having its back painted...). These iconographers are working and praying hard, and it shows in their beautiful work... (as an aside, they wanted to be sure a picture of me was included...)

The Visitation Day 2

We worked on the architecture today, and Elizabeth's white-grey hair. We continued our reading of Luke 1, in particular, the Annunciation.











Tomorrow: drapery!

The Visitation Day 1

Where we are...

Where we are headded...

Some pictures from the first day of our workshop...
We spent the morning in prayer, tracing our icon and mixing paints. In the afternoon we traced the icon onto the board and began laying in the foundation colors that serve as the shadows within the icon. To set a scriptural context, we began our reading of the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, telling the story of Elizabeth and Zachariah.






The class hard at work.












I hope to include more pictures of our work and of our iconographers as the days continue.