Icon of the Church (or How to Make Michael Want to Claw Out His Eyes)

nutroll said:

Thanks! The details really can take their toll on the eyes and the hands. Several years ago I painted something really, really detailed, and when I called the person who had commissioned it (who was a member of my sister's parish) to tell him that it was finished, he asked me how it looked. I told him that it looked great, and then joked that it was making me go blind. A couple weeks later, my sister called me and asked me if I was going blind. I told her that my ability to see fine details was not what it used to be, but that I still had my sight, and she told me that she had had several people come up to her during coffee hour to tell her what a shame it was that I was going blind. She was fairly certain that I would have let her know before I told everyone else. That was an early lesson for me that some people take jokes a little too literally and that I have to be careful what I say.

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nutroll said:

Thanks! The details really can take their toll on the eyes and the hands. Several years ago I painted something really, really detailed, and when I called the person who had commissioned it (who was a member of my sister's parish) to tell him that it was finished, he asked me how it looked. I told him that it looked great, and then joked that it was making me go blind. A couple weeks later, my sister called me and asked me if I was going blind. I told her that my ability to see fine details was not what it used to be, but that I still had my sight, and she told me that she had had several people come up to her during coffee hour to tell her what a shame it was that I was going blind. She was fairly certain that I would have let her know before I told everyone else. That was an early lesson for me that some people take jokes a little too literally and that I have to be careful what I say.

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nutroll said:

This icon was a commission that I finished recently. It is an icon that represents the Church, with Christ at the rudder of the Church. Most of it was taken from a drawing in the Pedalion (Rudder) which is the book of canon law. The priest who had commissioned it asked for St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain to be put on the boat, as he is the author of the Pedalion. So St. Nicodemus is sitting at the front of the boat holding a copy of the book.

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nutroll said:

Thanks everybody. I am planning on having prints for sale, but I'm not happy with the photograph, so I think I'll try again tomorrow. I'll be sure to post a link to where the prints will be for sale.

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Bushmaster78FS said:

How does an icon get copied from the original to another hard surface?

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Bushmaster78FS said:

No no, say this icon is complete and written on wood right? How does it get copied to another wood canvas, not postcard or anything... That is why I wanted to use "hard surface" rather than paper, cardboard, etc...

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Julina said:

why is it called icon writing and not painting?

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nutroll said:

Well I made a couple small changes from what I posted the other day, and got a photograph that I'm a little happier with, so for those who asked about prints, I now have a small Prayer Card (4.25" x 5.6") as well as a larger 11" x 11" print available on my zazzle site.

If anyone is really interested in having a mounted print, I can order in some prints and mount them, but I would want to have an idea of how many and what size I would need to make before I order anything. It would also be a while before I would get the prints and have them mounted.

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Matrona said:

A mistranslation from Greek. Some folks have read a "special meaning" into saying writing rather than painting, but saying "paint an icon" is totally correct, whereas saying "write an icon" is not somehow "more correct", it just flushes out armchair linguists by making them cringe.

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Michael the Iconographer said:

Sts. Peter and Paul are the men with the anchor.

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nutroll said:

Michael was correct about the two men with the anchor. They are indeed Peter and Paul, and they are holding an anchor with three points symbolizing the Trinity. The icon that I used as a prototype wasn't very clear as to who the figures were. In the front row, the saints looked like St. Andrew, St. James the Lesser, St. Matthew, and St. John, so that is who I made them into... The bishops in the back were even less clear as to who they were, but in my head the one farthest in the back behind the stand with the gospel is St. James the Brother of our Lord. I could easily find specific saints to associate each of them with based on their appearance, but I actually think they are supposed to be more symbolic of all the Holy Bishops of the Church rather than being specific saints. I did see another example of this icon that supposedly had the three great hierarchs, Basil, John Chrysostom, and Gregory, but in the one I was using as a prototype, these saints didn't look like them. Ultimately I thought it better to adhere to the prototype than to choose saints that I thought would symbolize certain things. But I do think The three Great Hierarchs and St. Gregory Palamas would have been really nice in there. I also think it would be nice to have Bishops from several different time periods, right up to modern day Saints.

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nutroll said:

Well I made a couple small changes from what I posted the other day, and got a photograph that I'm a little happier with, so for those who asked about prints, I now have a small Prayer Card (4.25" x 5.6") as well as a larger 11" x 11" print available on my zazzle site.

If anyone is really interested in having a mounted print, I can order in some prints and mount them, but I would want to have an idea of how many and what size I would need to make before I order anything. It would also be a while before I would get the prints and have them mounted.

Click to expand...

Matrona said:

A mistranslation from Greek. Some folks have read a "special meaning" into saying writing rather than painting, but saying "paint an icon" is totally correct, whereas saying "write an icon" is not somehow "more correct", it just flushes out armchair linguists by making them cringe.

Click to expand...