I'm taking this FANTASTIC class this semester called The Contemporary Icon with Bob Baart. Throughout the semester we learn all the traditional techniques for making religious icons - we prepare our own sizing and gesso, prepare our own boards, make egg tempera from pigment and egg yolk, and we even get to work with gold leaf and learn various gilding/tooling techniques. I am a HUGE fan of religious icons - early christian art is one of my favorite things, and so I jumped at the opportunity to take the class.
For the past three weeks we've been preparing practice boards and learning how to make all the grounds, as well as stretching and coating paper for silverpoint drawings. This week we got to make our first batches of egg tempera and do a practice painting on a practice panel. We were given two images to chose from - a detail of draped cloth and this ball in a bowl, and limited to building our palette from three (really two) colors - ultramarine blue, umber, and white.
I have never been good at rendering, and I have never taken a formal painting class, and so I'm actually really really proud of this little painting. I know it kind of sucks, and yeah, the bowl is supposed to be white, but I think it's awesome. Probably only the second or third still life i've ever worked from. I can't wait to work on my final piece - this weekend I hope to finish developing the imagery so I can get down to it soon. Stay tuned for more awesome stuff from this class!
