About
Three Maries at the tomb of Christ
My name is Veronica (Ronnie) Cruwys. I trained as an architect at Herriot-Watt University, Edinburgh and then Sheffield where I lived, married, became a mother and worked for ten years. We moved to Staffordshire where I later spent 13 years working as a conservation architect on some of Staffordshire’s finest listed buildings.
I maintain my love of old buildings (see my other website and blog www.drawingthestreet.co.uk) but in 2012 made a career change to pursue my other passion of the traditional arts, in particular the Liturgical Arts – painting icons, illuminated manuscripts and calligraphy.
I have been a student on Aidan Hart’s 2013-2016 Icon Diploma programme, run by the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts. This has been such a privilege that when I set out on the course, I began this blog as a way of sharing some of the experience with those other students who wish to learn about painting icons, wherever you are in the world.
All the icons on this website are painted with egg tempera, gilded with genuine gold leaf and all are for sale. All icons and studies on watercolour paper have been professionally photo-scanned to a high resolution and are available to order as fine art quality giclee prints.
If you would like to commission an icon, please get in touch with your ideas and budget and allow 4-6 months for completion.
Prints and cards are available of most of the icons through Smith York Fine Art Printers, in Ironbridge, link here.
4 Responses to “About”
Ronnie, I am full of admiration for your work and this blog which I’ve come to from your other delightful architectural drawing one. I am in awe of your dedication to this arcane skill, and I hope you occasionally scroll back down through your own posts and see how far you have come since the beginning! Best wishes for continuing artistic development in this new year.
Thank you Alison! Much appreciate the time you have taken to look at my blogs. Yes, it is quite a surprise (and funny!) to look back on my start-up work, but I hope it stands as encouragement for anyone interested in learning art in any shape or form. Thanks so much for the follow as your own work/blog is wonderful!
I am so happy I came across your blog! I have always wanted to learn more about iconography — especially the nitty gritty of all the materials. Thank you so much for sharing everything here. Your work is beautiful.
Thank you so much! I am only sorry I haven’t been posting recently but hope to put that right soon now that our classes have started back up. I have had my nose to the grindstone over the summer on my dissertation which forms part of the course. I hope to post what I have been up to in stages. It’s a practical theme on lettering for icons so I hope it is useful. Thanks again for reading and dont hesitate to ask questions – I may not have any answers but I can always ask Aidan on your behalf.