A modern iconographer speaking: “To produce a good icon, the icon-painter must adhere to ancient approaches. In old occasions, the conventional background for icons was gold leaf or silver leaf. Gold getting high priced, icon-painters normally used simple paints that have been low cost and made of natural ingredients. Inside the poor village churches of Russian North, each of the backgrounds were done with paints of quite light colour. ‘Fon,’ the Russian for background, is just not a Russian word. Our icon-painters named it ‘the light’. Priming for the panel was produced of sturgeon glue, also a really costly material. Effectively, in old occasions icons were not cheap… “ (Father Zinon) Get more information about иконописная мастерская в москве Icons are religious photos painted on wooden panels, usually created of linden or pine wood. Their production is a lengthy and complex process. A layer of linen cloth soaked in sturgeon glue is place on the panel. The ground is created of chalk mixed with fish glue. That is gesso. As much as ten layers from the gesso are applied over the cloth, or pavoloka . An outline of the composition is incised on the gesso using the point of a needle, often depending on an icon-painting manual. To prepare tempera paints, mineral pigments are mixed with water and egg yolk. The widespread minerals are cinnabar for reds, ochre (iron oxide) for yellows and lapis-lazuli for blues. All-natural minerals give transparency to colors. Transparency is key in developing the impact of luminosity in icons. Light and dark tones of various thickness are brought one on top rated of your other, layer right after layer. The white ground reflects light falling on its surface back via the semi-transparent tempera. The effect is that of inner light radiating from the image. Soon after painting is carried out 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, right after many years inside a wood-heated church or in a candle-lit ‘red’ corner of a peasant hut, the varnish becomes pretty dark and obscures the image. Inside the early twentieth century, to clean the old varnish off the icon surface, restorers used fire to soften the olifa. They put a bit alcohol on the surface of an icon and set it on fire. A restorer then was in a position to scrape off the olifa varnish and clean the icon.
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