On the second day

- June 30, 2020

I woke a little later than usual, 6:15. The morning sky was slightly overcast, the air cool. I unrolled my yoga mat and spent about 40 minutes in a gentle beginners yoga practice. Although I have practiced yoga for years, it has been about three years since I practiced regularly. Beginning again with the basics is good way to get back into a practice. By the time I finished the clouds had dissipated and the sun was shining. I made a pot of coffee and set about preparing for my day of icon writing. I am reading and following the book, “Drawing Closer to Christ: A Self Guided Icon Retreat” by Joseph Malham. I also have downloaded an icon class by a woman, a nun, from Greece. And, twenty some odd years ago I took an icon writing workshop with a visiting chaplain at Seabury Western, who I think was a retired Bishop from somewhere, Australia? Or was he priest who had spent time in Jerusalem. I do not remember. But he offered a weekend icon class where we were supposed to use the image of our own face in the icon. I thought mine was so bad that I threw it away. Now I wish I had saved it. Anyway, what I recall from that workshop is very different from this self guided one, and was much more like the process of the nun from Greece. The basic difference is that that this book recommends using carbon paper to trace the image of the icon onto a gessoed board. But both the workshop I took and the nun from Greece recommend hand drawing the image. I think there is a benefit to each process. However in this icon I think I prefer my hand drawn image to the carbon copied one.

To begin I have hand drawn the image a couple of times on paper. I used a compass to get the circles straight and sized proportionally. I liked the idea and the process of hand drawing, it was more intimate and gave me the opportunity to closer to the image. I found the carbon copy to be messy and difficult because I could not see what was being embossed on the board, even though I followed a precise order so I wouldn’t get lost and forget what I had copied.

After copying the image onto the gessoed board I had to use a stylus to define the outlines of the image. The stylus I have is not a needle point stylus so the work was slow and difficult, engraving the image into the wood.

After the engraving of the image on the board, I thought it would be a good idea to practice painting. I have not used acrylic paints for art in a long long long long time. So I spent part of the day painting one of the images I had hand drawn on paper. It was incredibly difficult. No doubt the fine art of writing an icon will be a process, and it will take a long while to really get it.

Tomorrow will be day three.

Here are images of what I did today: