Icon Diploma Student

Membrane Technique for icon faces

By ronniecruwys on March 15, 2017

I’ve had a few requests for a glimpse at my notes from the icon diploma course taught by Aidan Hart at the PSTA. There are a lot to sift through and they’re a bit illegible, even to me. However, I plan to revisit and re-write them at each stage of painting an icon but bear with me as this may take a while!

I’ve already made a start with the pigment grinding crib sheet and now that I’m currently underpainting an icon, I’ve written up my notes for this stage. They are on my website on the Crib Sheet page and I will share a link at the end of this post.

For the underpainting, I’ve found that mixing an earth green from Italian yellow ochre and ivory black has been a little less sticky than using terre verte.

Don’t forget to apply a dilute wash over all the unpainted areas before applying the membrane or it won’t cover evenly.

I still find it tricky to apply the membrane layers evenly but at least I know better not to fiddle with uneven areas. Just go and do something else for a few hours to let it properly dry then apply another couple of thin layers.

Next stage is applying the shading and highlights, but for now here are my notes: Membrane technique part one underpainting and membrane

By the way, the pigment grinding demonstration went well. More on the results of that when I use the pigment to paint!

Thanks for reading,

Ronnie