How to make an icon: a story in pictures and video

Our Lady of Fatima for Jeff

A fun post showing how I made this icon, step by step, from the drawing to preparing the panel for gilding, all the way through to painting and finishing. Since it’s my paid members who are making it possible for me to start uploading videos, I thought you’d appreciate some of the clips I made while doing this icon a few years ago, The Mother of God of Fatima, and see what goes into this kind of work.

Completed November 2021. I didn’t know how do do any of this when I started this commission.

I made this icon for a client a few years ago. As usual, it was a piece where I wanted to teach myself a bunch of new techniques. The icon was based on a prototype developed recently by a Russian Catholic iconographer and I wanted to try some of the layered and translucent painting techniques mastered by Fr. Anthony Gunin, whose work I admire tremendously¹.

I learned a great deal in this process, which was painfully long - and thanks again Jeff for being so patient - and I’m glad I took the extra trouble. I don’t think I’ll really ever get the knack of Fr. Gunin’s methods, but I pushed my skills forward a long way by studying them.

Read all about the creation of this original icon prototype, how it was made and what it means, here.

I recorded the process extensively, with lots of photos and videos, but then the files ended up getting buried in the huge haystack of “downloads” and I kind of forgot about it.

But today, since the arrival yesterday of new 1Tb external hard drive - that I was able to buy because of all you lovely people who signed up to be paid members - I’ve been going through the files and reorganising, rediscovering and remembering. And I came across all the video clips I took of the process and thought … hey…! I bet people would like this…

So here it is, a treat for the paid subscribers, to say thanks.

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The paid posts are going to be getting more in depth as we go along, and will contain more of this kind of bonus material, but it’s a full time job to create this content, even when I’m not travelling to the sites myself. So, I hope if you’ve found some value in this work, you’ll consider subscribing.

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