A means of support
A few years back, I was researching the techniques of Byzantine icon writing. I prepared three boards from scratch. One board was hand carved by a man who prepared icon boards for an Eastern Orthodox community in Pennsylvania. Pieced from strips of birch, it was a thick slab, with a lovely indentation at the center, providing the requisite broad border area for this sort of art.
I will go into greater detail on this process when I prepare another board from scratch, suffice to say that I began with rabbitskin glue sealing all sides, and a piece of glue-soaked muslin laid over the face of the board. Then I mixed a rabbitskin glue/chalk/whiting into a traditional gesso and applied it in 12 layers as specifically described, gradually thinning the mixture every three layers until I obtained a deep surface of it, with the smoothest and thinnest layers on top.
I let the boards cure, but shortly thereafter I obtained a job contract that left me little time for the elaborate process of icon writing. When checking back at six months, it became obvious that the birch board had warped from left to right, leaving it straight from top to bottom, like the side of a can. This is not acceptable in an icon writing support. I have since found much better results with cradled boards, or uncradled boards which are not pieced in any way. When using boards, I am more careful to seal all sides with multiple layers of rabbitskin glue before applying gesso.
I couldn’t bring myself to throw out the birch board. A lot of good energy had been invested in it, and the curve was so smooth and symmetrical. Only a single, thin crack had developed in the gesso surface, easily repaired. This meant that the surface itself had been well-prepared, with no extensive cracking during the movement of the warping board, and was unlikely to be damaged further as time went on. A light sanding was all the preparation needed.
So, in reviewing my options, seven years later, I decided to use the birch board, curve and all, in one of the Angelus pieces. Birch Interlace was a perfect fit, both physically and poetically, and considering I prepared the two at separate times, it is really amazing how it has worked out.
This entry was posted on Friday, January 16th, 2009 at 15:06 and is filed under Birch Interlace (fin). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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on January 16th, 2009 at 17:49
Looking forward to seeing what comes of this.
BTW- in the text of the second entry you refer to it as the “Mydwynter Studios Art Forum”, which is right, but in the sidebar of links you’ve left out the “Studios”. It might get confusing to…somebody.
Someday, may I have a “preparing wooden surfaces” lesson? I’d like to start messing around with egg tempera eventually.
on January 17th, 2009 at 17:02
Thank you for the input. Changed the link, “Mydwynter Studios Art Forum” was too long, but I think the compromise is better than the original, it’s your forum, tell me what you think.. Preparing wood surfaces-very cool. I’ve been working with acrylic panel gesso from Art-Boards, as well as researching making white and colored traditional gesso. The icon supports were done with some very elaborate instructions from a book I can’t find in my studio. I may have to reorder it.
on January 19th, 2009 at 18:51
That compromise is great! Thanks.
I was researching gesso back when I was working at the editorial company; we did museum exhibit catalogs, and we had been doing one for DaVinci, so during the day I read about the different ways he made his own and became curious about others’ recipes.
I’m not sure I could keep urine around in a bucket, at least in this housing complex.
Anyway, I think that working with panels would be a classy way for me to get around the facts that we can’t afford framing at the moment and I hate the way unframed things (like posters) look on a wall.
on January 21st, 2009 at 16:24
I’ve found that they still look cool unframed, but my fave framers out here have developed a framing method for the panels that is awesome. They bolt the panel into a shadow box frame, letting you see the sides, and letting you add another layer to the piece. Very cool.
Ive worked for a while with icon-writing and the techniques are different than the ones I read for Da Vinci. Can’t see keeping the urine around m’self. Sinopia pigments has some great info on gesso recipes. And they sell all of the non-urine related ingredients.
I”ve also bought ready mixed dry ingredients for chalk gesso from Utrecht, even though I have the dry ingredients at home. I thought I would give it a try, and see if I need to keep my bins full of whiting and dust. (sneeze factory) The complicated part has always been mixing in the glue solution without lumps.
I shall be glad to discuss at the forum. I’m not terribly experienced in it, but I’ve experimented with various things.