A modern iconographer speaking:
“To make a good icon, the icon-painter need to adhere to ancient techniques. In old instances, the regular background for icons was gold leaf or silver leaf. Gold being expensive, icon-painters frequently used uncomplicated paints that have been low cost and created of natural ingredients. Within the poor village churches of Russian North, each of the backgrounds have been performed with paints of quite light colour. ‘Fon,’ the Russian for background, will not be a Russian word. Our icon-painters called it ‘the light’. Priming for the panel was created of sturgeon glue, also an extremely costly material. Well, in old occasions icons have been not cheap… “ (Father Zinon) Get more information about www.st-alipy.ru
Icons are religious images painted on wooden panels, ordinarily produced of linden or pine wood. Their production can be a long and complicated process. A layer of linen cloth soaked in sturgeon glue is place on the panel. The ground is produced of chalk mixed with fish glue. That is gesso. As much as ten layers of the gesso are applied over the cloth, or pavoloka . An outline on the composition is incised on the gesso with all the point of a needle, generally determined by an icon-painting manual.
To prepare tempera paints, mineral pigments are mixed with water and egg yolk. The typical 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 building the impact of luminosity in icons. Light and dark tones of distinct thickness are brought one on best from the other, layer after layer. The white ground reflects light falling on its surface back through the semi-transparent tempera. The effect is that of inner light radiating from the image.
Immediately after painting is performed 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 offers them a deeper tone. But, after a lot of years within a wood-heated church or in a candle-lit ‘red’ corner of a peasant hut, the varnish becomes incredibly dark and obscures the image. In the early twentieth century, to clean the old varnish off the icon surface, restorers used fire to soften the olifa. They put just a little alcohol on the surface of an icon and set it on fire. A restorer then was able to scrape off the olifa varnish and clean the icon.
