Leanne Shawler, Artist

This was the first time I had finished an icon on my own. I wanted to experiment with using Golden fluid acrylics as opposed to the recommended Jo Sonja paints as well as using a Claybord instead of a more traditional (and expensive) icon board. I started at the beginning of 2015, so I was very focused on using what I had and being able to write an icon. Which is why I used the blue tracing paper I had rather than getting proper carbon paper. The blue marks melted into the paint, so no worries there. The background went down gorgeously in many many layers. My first attempt at mixing the hair color turned out red and it was looking really streaky although is only two layers worth. I decided to fix that later. My concern with the Golden paints is that they are shiny. The parchment mix with the Titanium White shows just how shiny they can be. Would it stand out as super-shiny against the other not so shiny colors? Sankir, the shadow color down. I just love sankir ...

I had great plans to write an icon during the 12 Days of Christmas. Boxing Day (December 26) I sat down with a Claybord and opened up the paints that I mixed *cough*two*cough* years ago to find all but two had hardened. I needed new containers and well .... new paint. This is not just a prayerful meditation in paint, but an experiment in using a different brand of paint. I was taught using Jo Sonja paint, which when watered down, creates a flat matte surface. I don't own any of that brand, but I do have plenty of Golden fluid acrylic paint. Why new paint? One of the colors mixes that survived was Hair. Which was turning Jesus into a redhead, thus the need for a couple of new Golden paints. I will share the equivalents, when I discover if they work. So far, the Raw Sienna behaves exactly like the Jo Sonja, which is to say, it's a pain to get even coverage. It is drying flat and matte. The Parchment, the only other color I could paint without needing later, has dried...

that moment holy freshly birthed candle flicker I bow, honey upon my tongue chant echoes  wholly that moment

First, I have learned that it's only the first icon ever that you keep, the rest may be kept or given or whatever. So with the next icon I do, I shall have to keep that intention for whom I'm writing it in my mind/prayers throughout the process. me and Mary after the icon was blessed, Sunday after Christmas The best part about writing an icon with Helena was that our friendship deepened as a result. We never got right down to it (it being icon writing) the moment we walked in the door. There was a meal or a cup of tea and a sharing. However, unlike the intensive five day long icon workshop, we were able to take our time, ponder over our choices. (We decided not to do a border and it took us a while to figure out our color choice for the lettering.) It did feel sometimes like we were going too slow for there was also a tension present. We both work full time and so the weekends were our only open time for this.  This meant there were weekends that the hubby h...

Sorry for the delay in getting this post out. Helena and I finished our icons last weekend and I get to pick up mine from her place, hopefully Saturday and then get it blessed. It's been a busy last few days preparing for the family gathering on today, Christmas Day, and I still have a little bit to do for that, but first, the icon update. After abandoning the whole borders idea, we still had to use the ruling pen (with watered down red paint inside! terrifying!) to put down the lines for Jesus' halo. This is Helena at work: (PS: Not sure how these videos are going to work ... ) My icon, ready for varnish under the glow of a lamp Helena's icon, ready for varnish, under the lamp Shiny, eh? Well wait, there's more. The magical transformation that occurs with varnish. Watch the magic (sound effects are all mine): I feel I could write something about the transfiguration of the icon at this point, but the excitement level is still a little too high ...

... as Helena caught up on her painting of white spots, I hung out with Mary and baby Jesus... and discovered that our premixed hair, parchment, etc colors had dried out.  So I sat and mixed paints  ... and squealed as carbon black went everywhere! Helena insisted I replicate the look on my face: then we went and had lunch and decided not to do a border (sorry, Paige) and so we painted the edges of the board. But I did do one other thing, can you spot it? To be fair, it was only a little bit of outlining. Next time, (hopefully next week) we'll do the gilding and swing the halo, although I think I said we were going to do that last time

Last weekend saw an exciting update on the icon writing front. One in a good way, one in a bad way. Bad way first. I was adding the "blush" to Jesus' cheek when this happened: The green splotch kind of pointed at by Mary's fingertips is where the layers of flesh color paint lifted right off as I tried to fix an overdo of blush. I had to walk away from the icon and let it dry some before repairing it. You can't even tell I made a mistake! Here is how my icon finished up. I added a couple of layers of lighter paint on the background, but you can't really make that out in the late afternoon light except on the inside of the halo. And here's Helena's at the end of the day. The next is the good way: We are almost done! Next is the halos: gold leaf and red edging! Lots of prayers involved for that.

You may remember that Helena and I took a couple of weeks off in order to find a weekend where we could do an entire day and start and finish our icon's faces and hands in one sitting so the color would be consistent. At least this was the plan. We ended up continuing again today (Sunday) after church. This is where we left my icon two weekends ago: Here they are at the end of Sunday. Want to see how we went from Kermit to Mary and Jesus? Keep on reading... (well, looking, this is image intense) Time to stop for lunch! I made French Canadian quiche. (a Quiche Lorraine but with ham steaks Canadian bacon instead of bacon. Geddit?) Made the pastry from scratch too. (mine) (Helena's) That's where we left it Saturday afternoon. The next day Helena joined me at church and sang in the choir even :) (yeah, new haircut for me!) We both commented on how our faces seemed to have mellowed overnight. The strokes were less visible. I don...

It's been a little quiet on the blog here ... I've been through my first High Holy Days (more on that on Friday) and had a nasty cold in between time (sleeping through my day off two Fridays ago) which meant we canceled our canceled our icon writing that weekend. We resumed last Sunday. We spent some time planning ahead. We realized that to get the faces and hands done with the same shades of flesh meant dedicating a whole day's work to it, so we are taking the next two weekends off in order to settle into that day long of icon writing together. We walked through where the guidelines would go and where the highlights would go. We spent Sunday afternoon catching up on the bits at the ends of the first two "days" of the workshop material. Such as the sleeve I forgot to highlight the last time: We practiced doing doo-dads on paper with toothpicks before working on the actual board (and discovered that the paper's absorbency meant the board worked total...