Book Teaching Icon Painting by Aidan Hart
It is with much excitement that I await the arrival of a new book on the theology, history and painting techniques of icon painting. I have just heard that this has now been published by Gracewing in the UK and he told me that as yet there is no US distributor. If anybody knows how I can get hold of a copy, let me know! You can see details on his website here.
As a faithful Orthodox Christian, Aidan has the prejudices against other, Catholic, artistic liturgical traditions and culture that one would expect. As with any book by Orthodox, Catholics should be ready for this, but in my experience, there is little that we should be worrying about in such a discussion of the iconographic tradition, and much to learn. Certainly I am going to find out how to get hold of a copy and will report as soon as do so.
Below you have some very rough step by step paintings of the membrane technique, in which there is an underpainting in monochrome and then transparent washes are applied over it - left to right, starting top left.