The gilding - at long last.

After getting your background sealed and shellaced, the next step is to apply oil size. Harder than it sounds... It is a kind of tacky varnish, with the number next to it (3,6,12,16 (which is much rarer) and so on) referring to the number of hours it will stay 'open' i.e. in which time the gold can be applied. It must be put on slowly, but not too slowly, carefully and with as few streaks as humanly possible. This is VERY tricky when it is not a simple straight or flat area, such as around the outline of a curly-headed angel with wings! When in doubt, take the size closer to the edge and you can either a) scrape the gold gently back later on or b) (and perhaps safer) paint over the gold in one or two tiny areas, as with oil gilding there are always areas which need to be readdressed. And I had that from a very experienced, talented furniture restorer and gilding teacher, so I'm not making excuses... well not many ;-)

To apply the gold, you must wait until the size is only just tacky and squeaks when you very, very, VERY lightly drag your finger knuckle along an inconspicuous point. Don't use a fingertip, unless you want everyone to be able to identify the gilder in years to come... When it squeaks and doesn't mark you are ready to gild. Although I used six hour size, it was actually ready to go a bit earlier than that - you can almost see the difference and if you have the luxury of a spare piece of wood that you have prepared, I'd make a sort of 'gilding sample' so you don't necessarily have to squeak the actual board. The sheet gold used is pressed into pieces of tissue paper, rather than loose leaf which I prefer as it gives an absolutely smooth finish - the imprint of the tissue means it will never be entirely mirror-like. Plus sometimes the sheets aren't stuck in very well, so if in doubt, gently compress the book before attempting to use the sheets. Trial and error here I'm afraid, mostly error on my part... You can either use a whole sheet, if it is a large flat area, or if you are gilding over borders or around a complicated area, use scissors (yes, but good quality ones with un-nicked blades) to cut up the sheet. You then apply the gold straight on, no brushes required and lightly press down on the back of the paper. I will admit right now that most of my gold came off the sheets (thank you unnamed supplier!) and I had no real idea what I was doing. All the same, with a bit of patience, you can get it to look ok, viz the above picture. When you are done, as with water gilding you can lightly brush the surface to get rid of any tags of gold and lightly burnish the finish, which is how I got the glow here. I'm not that pleased with it but as my first oil gilding experience, it's not unbearable. Stick to water gilding is my main advice...

from jewels to background

Once the jewels are all painted in, complete with white and black washes to create the facets (if you want to, you don't have to but this is quite a 'greek' icon, so I wanted to go the whole hog), you use some quick-drying japanese gold size (which is ready to use within about fifteen minutes) and pressed-leaf gold to create the mounts or settings for the jewels. The effect is remarkable, especially if you sacrifice a very small 00/000 brush to avoid the 'clumpy' effect you sometimes see on icons. (blech, personal strong dislike, can you tell?).
That's about it, apart from the background and titles. I decided to try some oil gilding, which was a first for me. Perhaps a last as well, as it requires you to use copious amounts of shellac (smelly) and oil size (a tacky varnish), after adding a rich colour to the first coats of shellac which you use to seal the very absorbent gesso. The reason for that is that you don't want different areas of the gold size being absorbed at different rates. It's a bit complicated and trust me, unless this is an icon that is going to be outside or get heavy wear and tear, just stick to water gilding. Harder to get initially but a much more versatile finish. Here's the photo of the initial stage, with screaming red shellac..

A bit more on the icon

Yes, it's been a while but since the icon was finished a while ago, it's just a question of posting more photos until we reach the end of this process. I hope it's been useful for at least one or two of you, in the zillions of people who use the internet at large.

After the red layer has been done, the face becomes enlivened even further by restating some of the earlier dark lines, shadows around the hairline and at the neck and an overall checking of colour and tone balances. This is something that differs with each icon as it's impossible to be completely prescriptive about how defined something will look at the outset. This one also shows the layers of paint washed in to form the very unusual wings - these were ones which Aidan had chosen and I've not seen them elsewhere. The colours were indian red and black for the base, then washes of titanium white and ivory black on top. The jewels are either drawn or painted on free hand, and then filled with an opaque white so that the colours on top have a glow to them. You can see where I've filled in the red ones already.

Help me back into the boat.

I found this on the Orthodixie blog and thought what a brilliant way to start a sermon. I'll never have to give one but it was very, very helpful. More pictures to come next week, as this week has just been one crazy day after another!

* * *

I have a few announcements to make before today’s sermon.

First of all, if you see my daughter, or any child for that matter, acting up in church, teach her – them – how to pray. We come to church on the Lord’s Day to pray. There’s a whole week in between to learn behavior and behave. Here, let’s pray. (The same thing goes for adults.)

If you see me with a frown on my face, forgive me. It speaks more of my sins than it does our relationship. If you’ve time, help me out. A smile alleviates a frown every time.

If you want more things in church: more activities, more fellowship, church school supplies, carpet – whatever it may be – give more money. That’s just the way it works.

Want more people in church? Invite them.

If you see me sinning, don’t encourage me. Like a child in need of attention, I’ll often show off in a rather ill manner. Perhaps your loving me, in spite of myself, will help to exorcise the demons with whom I’m all too familiar. Besides, if you join me in sin, we’ll be doubly miserable.

If you catch me entering gossip, stop me. For I pray each day "forgive me, O Lord, the same way I forgive others.” You’d be a great help to me, yourself, and everyone if you’d lovingly hush me up.

If you see me feasting on Wednesday, Friday, or during Seasonal Fasts ... forgive and reprove me with love. For in so doing, I show my kinship with Judas and those who crucified the Lord Jesus. Yet, with your help, I can repent and experience the God of Resurrection and Light.

Please don’t sit throughout the Liturgy unless you have a physical ailment that requires it. We’re a lazy people in this modern age, but true prayer has always been hard work. All able bodies should stand in remembrance of the Resurrection & the Day of Judgment. Let us attend.

By all means, if you hear me speaking heresy – please, quail my tongue with love. For the Saviour has sacrificed too much for me and my salvation for me to forfeit the Kingdom with lying lips. God forbid that I should drag you with me.

If you observe me being patient in a time of trial, give thanks to God for it is His Spirit that guides me.

If, however, you see me being impatient, forgive me. I come by it naturally, even from Adam and Eve.

If my way of life is not the same as yours, it does not mean that we are not of the same Christian family. It just means that God in His wisdom has fashioned us in a unique manner – yet, with the same Lord as God and Father of all.

If you know that I’m in need, help me. For God surely will bless those who bless Him.

If you find my attitude, my words, my every way of life leaves you cold, please don’t abandon me. I’m lonely. Perhaps your presence, love, forgiveness, and long-suffering will help to melt my frozen heart.

If you think you have sacrificed enough, it is often at that very moment that God asks the most of you.

If you’re not tithing to the church [giving at least 10% of your income], please don’t complain. Because God Himself answers our plea with a challenge “Give me 10%, and I’ll fill your storehouses.” (By the way, for some reason, those who tithe complain less.)

If you make a mess, clean it up. Otherwise you manufacture enemies as well.

If you notice someone absent from church, call them. They may need you.

Most of all, if you see me walking on water, help me back into the boat. For, by myself, I shall perish.


In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The boat represents the Church, the disciples represent all Christians. The stormy sea is our life. We are in the Church, the boat, because Christ commands us to be there. Disciples are obedient. Christ comes to us in times of danger. Notice that Christ did not command Peter to come to him. Rather he permitted the act. Peter was not acting out of obedience, but boldness. Peter became frightened, his faith was shaken. Why? Chiefly because of his foolishness in leaving the boat, the Church. Thus, our first lesson here is do not leave the safety of the boat, the Church. Christ commands them to get into the boat! When we do find ourselves outside the ark of our salvation (boat/Church), we must, like Peter, cry out “Lord, save me!” And He will. Christ not only commands us to enter the Church, He also has mercy upon us when we are disobedient, leading us back to the calm haven of our salvation the Church. It is in the confines of the Church that we [like Thomas] recognize Jesus as our Lord and God. It is in the Church that we, like the disciples in the boat, worship Him.

So, I repeat:

If you see me walking on water, help me back into the boat.

For, by myself, I shall perish.

Even if my sins and pleas are seemingly self-centered,
do not be as I ... reach out and grab hold of my hand.

For this, Christ died ... we live.

Help me, my brothers and sisters in Christ,
for I need you -- we need each other -- in this storm tossed sea.

Friendship

I was looking at this blog and thinking it had become a bit, well, monotonous. I don't hear anyone rushing to disagree. Thinking (again, I know) about what makes life brighter, even in dark corners, I thought of friendships and the friends we have at various times in our lives.

When we are young children, if we are lucky, we have a 'best friend' in our class at school. I've recently seen this with a friend's little boy and was struck at the absolute devotion he expressed one minute, the annoyance roused in the next and the fact that neither made any difference to the concrete fact of their friendship. As we get older and perhaps move or change schools, our interests change and sometimes our friends do as well. Perhaps we have a 'gang' or one or two special friends, perhaps we dress the same and listen to the same music. These friends can become our world, our reference points, our safe harbour from a world that doesn't, couldn't, understand us. If we are fortunate enough to go to college then we meet fellow students from around the world - fellow travellers on the path of higher education. Quite often all we have in common is the subject we are studying but something, somewhere within us calls, "deep to deep" and we make new and exciting friends. Perhaps we meet our future partners at university. This time we all know that we are likely to head off in different directions and pursue different goals but again, the fact of our friendship is solid, a "firm foundation".

I've recently been aware that I have no friends from any of these points in my life. I have friends I have made at many of my wildly varied jobs, including my husband John, who I would describe as my 'best friend' (although perhaps in a more primary school kind of way...), I have friends from my interests, mainly singing and sewing, and finally, I have many friends from Church. Although the population of our community changes with frightening rapidity, as the academic year comes and goes, research grants start and finish, contracts are given and end, there is a core of membership which (I hope) tries to welcome these new members, make them a little less homesick by providing them with a 'new' home and sends them off with prayers and even a husband or wife. Or children, depending on how long they stay! We are all blessed when some of them even choose to stay forever.

We have recently started a group on the new 'Facebook' website (and I'm going to be a technopeasant and not put a link in just yet) so that many of our members can stay in touch, let us know their own news and we can share our. How else can you tell people in the USA, Canada, Greece and the south of England about a baby being born here in Edinburgh within a couple of hours? (OK, so there's the phone but who uses that now?) (and I am kidding). What an amazing thing the internet has become. While on the one hand it enables the perpetration of some of the most awful abuses known to man, it can, when used with discernment, be a wonderful way to share friendship all around the world. I firmly believe that conflict begins when we stop talking, stop trying and stop being friends. The internet, then, could be a very valuable way to prevent conflict and, of course, to help us continue friendships for as long as possible.

In spite of the many pressures we are under, the huge geographical distances we find separating us, the breakneck speed at which each month, each year, seems to disappear, just being able to say a few words, whether it is 'hello', 'thanks', 'sorry' or even 'help' is often all that we need. The one friend we don't need the internet to contact, the one we all have in common, responds particularly well to these simple words and expressions of our heart. I don't remember many of my childhood hymns, but "what a friend we have in Jesus" sits there alongside "Jesus loves me, this I know". Perhaps I was wrong in saying that I don't have any friends from my childhood or, more likely, He knew me long before I showed up on that sunny August morning, satchel in hand.

not yellow.... RED this time!

What I love about iconography is that you can use a very limited palette - (thinks quickly): black, white, yellow ochre/mars yellow, red ochre, a green ochre e.g. avanna, a brown e.g. burnt umber and if necessary a blue (I like Lapis or azurite, for a more greeny blue). With these seven colours you can create almost any tone required for an icon and most of them won't be used for flesh - you only need three or perhaps four for that.

Having done almost all of the flesh so far with yellow and more or less white, we now bring in red, this time an English red ochre which is warm but not too bluey or to muddy. A combination of washes, light 'hatching' type strokes and small areas of more concentrated colour warm up the flesh to create a more vivid presence. (That's the theory anyway!).

Further stages on the face

because I have a funny feeling that picture i just posted was the same as the one before but can't prove it.. Here you can see the photismata, or 'small lights' which are the almost final stage to the face. They can be more or less dramatic, depending on the icon, the style, the painter, the age of the icon etc., but they give a strength, vibrancy and dynamism to the image which could otherwise look a bit soft and over emotional. Perhaps you would disagree?

The end is (almost) nigh

Well I am sure you are beginning to wonder if I will ever finish this icon! This stage is a further refinement of the flesh, a tidying up of the hair, you can just glimpse the wings, which I have copied from Aidan's original icon with a puddling technique known in the West as "Petit Lac" - more commonly used in Russian style icons and one that Aidan combines with a drier brush style.