Icon Diploma Student

Learning to see with the eye of the heart

Posts tagged ‘wrights of Lymm’

‘I Saw Him!’

mary Magdalene tells the disciples Christ has risen

Mary Magdalene is first with the good news ‘I have seen the Lord!’

Good morning and Happy Easter!

Romanesque manuscripts are a rich resource for iconographers. I have often wondered how a manuscript image would work painted on to a gessoed board instead of vellum. I had a small maple board (approx 6″x 8″) already prepared so I set aside the homework on my nativity icon to work on this small experimental piece during Lent.

I chose this image of Mary Magdalene announcing her news to the discples. It’s from the St Alban’s Psalter, one of several known to have been created at or for St Albans Abbey in the 12th century. I love their expressions and the long thin draperies contrasted with oversized hands and feet.

Icon board first stage of work for St Albans Psalter

Outline of figures added and oil gilding applied.

I transferred the outlines from my line drawing in red ochre then applied several layers of acrylic gold size (with some red ochre added to provide a contrast against the gesso) to adhere the transfer gold.

I then applied the base colours, including the richly coloured Caput Mortum for the background.

Ground terre verte azurite on icon board

Building up the layers of garment colours

7 a Magdalene and disciples st Albans

Gritty pigment

Some of my pigments are quite gritty. I like this varied texture on backgrounds but it’s hopeless to work with on tiny faces and details so I ground them up with a slab and muller and a spoon of water until they were very smooth.

The blue I used was a gift from my son who has recently been to Japan. While he was there he went to the new shop ‘Pigment‘ especially to buy me some! Here’s a sample of Azurite which I ground up and by levigating the mix I ground out three beautiful blues.

grinding up pigment from Tokyo PIGMENT

Kyojyo Gosu 6 Azurite from ‘Pigment’ in Tokyo

As the terre verte was too gritty to underpaint the small features on the faces, I used black and yellow to make green instead.

Underpainting faces

Underpainting faces using Maimeri yellow and a touch of ivory black

applying membrane to face painting

Adding the membrane to faces using maimeri yellow and white, a dash of red added later

6 face highlights

Building up highlights on the faces and adding the hair

The faces still seemed too pale so I added a few washes of French Ochre Havanna (also called Warm Ochre). Looking at the faces and hair this close up I can see there is still some work needed.

7 final faces

Deepening the shadows, adding vermillion to the eyes and white highlights

I added several layers of malachite over the terre verte to give this rich green.

8 St ALbans Psalter Magdalene announces news

The almost finished article.

To see the original manuscript, please visit the St Albans’s Psalter here and this icon is now available to buy from my Etsy shop here.

Wishing you all a blessed and happy Easter and as Mary Magdalene first said: ‘He is Risen!’

Thanks for reading

Ronnie

P.S. Prints and cards are now available of this icon from Smith York Printer

 

Three days on a Triptych

icon class

Icon Diploma Students taken at Aidan Hart’s May session 2015

Hello icon friends and class mates,

I’m just back from a three day intensive painting our standing/seated figures. I brought my gilded triptych centre panel already prepared with the image transferred so I could start to paint in class.

icon outline drawing

Transferring outline on to gessoed panel

Just to rewind a little, I photocopied my drawing on to tracing paper to locate the outline prior to water gilding. After gilding, I rubbed red ochre pigment into the back of the tracing paper/drawing itself (rather than using an intermediary sheet), and using a fine propelling pencil with a fairly hard lead, transferred the image on to the board.

tracing paper drawing

Drawing of icon on tracing paper

Once all the main lines were transferred on to the board, a weak mix of pigment fixed the lines in place. I then began the underpainting and modelling of the garments.

underpainting icon

First stage of underpainting

Aidan suggested that I used Red Ochre for the Blessed Virgin’s upper garment as it has some blue in it. I also used Lapiz Lazuli Dark, a beautiful natural blue and Ivory Black to deepen both colours; all pigments are from Cornelissen’s.

ivory black and red ochre

Ivory black and Red Ochre pigments

Both pigments are very strong so I mixed them up separately first, then blended. For the underpainting I used a lovely size 2 Roubloff 1010 kolinsky sable brush which I had recently ordered from Vesta-k. It has a really sharp point and holds the pigment well.

underpainting garments

Building up the underpainting of the garments

I mixed black to the lapiz lazuli and red ochre in varying degrees to give depth to the underpainting. The deeper shadows are painted using a lot of black in the mix.

lapiz lazuli

First layer of membrane applied using a wash of pure Lapiz lazuli over the underpainting.

membranes on icon

Membranes on the garments

Pure red ochre and lapiz membranes washed over the underpainting with a very thin layer of lapiz washed over the red afterwards to unite the garments.

After several layers of membrane, I applied a nourishing layer of 20% egg 80% water and let it dry before going over the shadows and adding highlights. Aidan suggested fine layers of pure white dry-brushed over the membrane to give translucent layers of highlights.

The underpainting of the Christ Child is in English Yellow Ochre with a little Red Ochre added to model the form. The colours are painted quite densely as the garments will be gilded using shell gold assist. I understand from my class mate Lee that for the crispest, most gleaming gold lines, hand-made shell gold is the way to go – thanks Lee! Watch this space for adventures in making shell gold – I rang Wrights of Lymm for a couple of books of gold today!

three days work

Three days work

Thanks for reading.

Ronnie

Gilding the Triptych

gilding a triptcyh

Gilding a triptych

I’d like to share a few thoughts following my attempts to water gild the triptych. It’s Spring here in UK and I love the lighter days and milder weather. I opted to work in the conservatory for the even light and to be immersed in the burst of new green in the garden.  I often have cold hands so the warmth in here is wonderful for loosening up my fingers ready for gilding. It’s better to gild in cool, damp weather but I thought I might just get away with it being mild – nope, I didnt! So here is my first tip: if gilding a large area in warmer weather, do it in two or three stages as the bole dries out so quickly. You need time to burnish the gold whilst the bole is still relatively soft soon after double gilding. With hindsight, I should have gilded and burnished all the raised areas as one complete area first, then gilded and burnished all the flat areas afterwards.

raised border gilding

Gilding the Kivotos

Masking out the gesso was helpful as carefully scraping the gold off the gesso after gilding can take an hour or so. For the fiddly areas, I used a sharp scalpel to score along the edges in the same way as I did with the bole (See previous post). The other thing which helped was thirteen layers of bole. These were just enough to cover the tiny air holes in the gesso and the patches of scrim which had shown through. If you are about to gild, then I can recommend Aidan Hart’s class demonstration video clip here on You Tube.

gilding a door to the icon triptych

Double gilding over the first layer of loose gold on one of the doors

Masking fluid saves time scraping gold from gesso

Masking fluid saves time scraping gold from gesso

gilding kit

Some ingredients for gilding – cat drinking the water for brush-cleaning is optional!

A phone (switched off) makes a handy 10mm/half inch prop to lift the icon board so the water flows away from previously gilded areas. Hand cream is useful to rub on the back of your hand before brushing the squirrel tip across – this helps the gold leaf stick to the tip. Vodka is added to the gilding mix together with Buxton water (PH neutral). I used gold leaf, 23 and 3/4 carat loose, extra thick from Wrights of Lymm, Cheshire. The small jar contains size prepared from rabbit skin glue granules. Other gilding kit consists of a squirrel mop ( the large brush to the top right), a gilder’s cushion and gilder’s knife to cut the gold leaf. Having a cat in the midst is not ideal as hairs blow into the mix. However, at the moment our cat is still out-of-sorts having recently lost her companion and won’t settle unless she has company nearby. If you are about to water gild an icon – here is our class crib sheet of Gilders’ Tips which may help.

Gilding complete

Gilding complete

This actually looks a lot better than it does in real life but I am glad the gilding is done. Some parts are smooth, some pretty rough in spite of a solid week’s work. Here’s a close-up on the burnishing marks as a result of letting it dry out too much:

Burnishing marks

Burnishing marks

Once again, thanks for reading and all the best with your own endeavours. Ronnie