Icon III what I have learned

What I have learned from this.

Don’t set off with a half thought plan

Think through.

Make sure you have the right equipment.

Don’t paint in the kitchen.

Use good methods,

Well researched processes

and practiced techniques, practice a lot.

Work carefully and silently.

Do things in the right order

Pray a lot

Step back now and again

Take breaks to think and reflect

Have energy

Don’t be tired.

Three phases of the eclipse of the moon are for Mary’s robe

Our Lady of the Sign

Our Lady Platytera, Hogetria,

More Spacious than Heavens, God Bearer.

O Moon.

Those nights in my Stanningley studio

The huge windows a panoptican of the sky.

Clouds and the moon moving

From one window to the next, across a wall of three huge windows.

As I sit drawing

aspects as they pass

In white ink

In black ink

In silver ink

the moon phases on.

Our Lady of Guadalupe shines and emits her light.

the underpainting for my Lady Burning Bush

modeling on Jesus face

Adding to the foliage 

and starting to model the face.

Re painting the flames.

Thinking about flames

I was thinking about our Lady of Guadalupe

How she has flames all around her

The flames are like a body halo, or aura or energy pulse

Wavy flames, flat flames, equal height flames, alternate shirt and long flames, ribbon flames.

Her hands raised in orans – prayer

This icon is proving that what I thought I know I don’t know, in fact I know nothing

I have started again

More than once

And that accident with a pan of onion gravy

Leaves me unsure even after sanding whether a stain of animal fat may reappear on the surface

Of a suspect rough patch turns out to be an onion skin forgotten until some damp weather

Curls it out of the picture frame.

Our Lady’s head needs to be bigger,

One sleeve is lower than the other

I don’t think this can this be interpreted as immodest?

Our Lady of the Rolled up Sleeves

Working lady

Down to business lady

Not afraid to get her hands dirty – lady

The flames are higher than the mountain – is this distracting?

Try

It.

Just when I think I am getting there with this icon, I am shown that I must change something, and I have to be open to that change even thought I'm so stubborn and I don't want to make more work for myself, there is a prompting and I have to alter it. 

Here I have added green to the foliage, taken it right down to the halos, strengthened the faces and hands, deepened the blue of the gown.