contemporary christian icons – Sacred Murals Studio Newsletters

Nearly Finished!

Dear Friends, did you ever wonder, why exactly 24? Why we only have 24 hours in one day/night session?

Icons for iconostasis of church of saint Panthaleone in Saint Petersburg

There are so many things to do and so little time! We often discuss, that the more we live, the more we see ways for applying the creativity, but where to get enough time for everything!

Well, the experience says: serious things take time. And now we both are stack in big projects, eagerly awaiting to finish and share the results with you… And yet there are some more efforts to make, – some more days and hours in the studio…

In addition to being stack in the art, we also have some “digital stress”: – Google keeps saying we need to remodel our website and make it more accessible.

Printing on Fabric. Epitaphios for Orthodox church of Mary Magdalene in NYC

Yes, we agree that it’s very high time, to make it mobile-friendly, and we also want to change the gallery so it allows seeing images in larger sizes. It’s a long process as well, but within some months we do hope to launch the new design, – we will keep you posted!

Well, complaining about the time we absolutely must mention, how deeply we both are grateful for all the help we receive from you! We just constantly feel kindness and friendship, radiating from you and other people around us. With your help we continue making our efforts and researches in our own work and teaching others.

As some of you may have noticed from our Instagram photos, it’s almost a year now that Olga is in the process of creating a liturgical Epitaphios. It’s a traditional liturgical object, usually made of embroidered and often richly adorned cloth.

For a number of years now Olga from time to time helps to design and craft liturgical vestments in our parish embroidery studio. At a certain point, she got inspired to do something on her own, introducing contemporary technologies into this very special world. Instead of golden threads and embroidery, used for centuries, Olga uses pochoir and other techniques to achieve the necessary level of complexity and richness of the image with artistic means. This photograph shows one of the moments of the working process, there is also a slow-motion video, but if you like to see the action, have a look at a time-lapse video, – it squeezes some working hours into one minute.

Manuscript Barb.gr.372 from Library of Vatican

We hope that in August the whole thing will finally come together and will finally reveal everything.

In the meantime, I wanted to share some other news and resources from our friends. First, – Todor Mitrovic gave us a couple of wonderful manuscripts. One was published by the Vatican Library and the other one by the British Library.

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And at the bottom of the page here is some space to get little more grounded. As always we are gladly sharing our friend’s and our own practical information.

First: Our dear friend Margaret Broadbent and her Russian connection Natalia Pecherskaja invite everybody to join their “Pilgrimage of Peace” for August 3-15 August, 2020.

The 13-day program in MOSCOW – TVER – GREAT NOVGOROD – St. PETERSBURG and all the events are organized by the Centre for Science, Religion & Philosophy Programs (SRPh) St. Petersburg, Russia http://www.srph.ru together with the Gippsland Travel, Warragul, Victoria, Australia, www.gippslandtravel.com.au. The Program will be in English.

in this Russian Summer Program – please contact Russian program co-ordinator: Dr. Natalia Pecherskaya: natalia.pecherskaya@gmail.com or Australian co-ordinator Sr. Margaret Broadbent margaret.broadbent@ mercy.org.au , if you are interested.

And at the very end, I wanted to mention, that our workshops in Italy, the USA and Australia for 2019-2020 are filling up. From our side we continue discussing and preparing several new lectures on theology and practical moments, and if you ever thought of signing up for something it might be the time (maybe not?).

We used to make flyers with some brief information and ask our friends to share the printed versions, but we do not know, whether they work or they do not. Maybe yet they do, even though the whole world is digitized, we still trust more to a paper page, instead of a screen? Maybe we should think of both since there are more and more people now relying on internet?

Here it is: to show what our workshops process looks like we put together a little video footage on youtube, hope it gives an idea:

Thank you again for supporting us and for letters with questions, – they always inspire us to study and discover something new.

As one of our Russian iconographers-friends (Andrei Bodko) said, –

Nowadays, with all the light-fast means of spreading the information, we all teach each other, do we want it or not. All together we are a “soup” for each other… We all are a broth or a “bouillon” of knowledge, ideas, thoughts, and other things, enriching each other.

And if we already stay connected, I suggest we pray for a “Worldwide Community of Iconographers”, asking God’s help to be good enough to inspire our neighbors!

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To be continued…

Philip (and Olga)

July 2018

Dear Friends,
Life is running fast and we feel honored to share a great news:

We are glad to announce an official Partnership with Pontifex University. From now on each of our workshops can count as a credit toward Master of Sacred Arts degree. You can see a short description at our website: http://sacredmurals.com/pontifex_university.htm . The proposal came from one of our students, who had already had an experience with them, so we decided to try. If you want to know more, please check directly the website of Pontifex University, we hope that a possibility to have knowledge and skills officially confirmed might be a good one
Icon drawing workshop

Our Icon Drawing workshop Holy in Cross Monastery is not filled up yet, – there are still some available spots (unlike the one in The New Skete with a couple of people on waiting list). We have had this program in Melbourne and it worked wonderfully, – by the end of the 5th day, everybody gained much better drawing ability, including the instructors. And one more time everybody approved, that even if drawing is a difficult part, one can enjoy painting much more, having set up a good construction.
Olga’s had extremely intense months doing her graphic work, so, that in several weeks we expect images to be published. It is going to be a wall calendar, approximately 40 * 30 cm (16 * 12 inches) and we hope to have some copies to share.

Social Media: On!
– As Olga continues running our main Instagram and it has become a good entertainment. Lately, we decided to incorporate it into our website so that everybody might see the latest updates at the left-bottom coner.

Besides, in October we plan to create a special page for mosaics on our website. To start spreading the word about it we decided to begin publishing little images in a separate instagram page run by Philip.

Five new icons and a mosaic piece by Philip Davydov:

Annunciation icon

Icon of Holy Mandylion

More – later!

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With warmest regards,

Philip Davydov and Olga Shalamova

July 2017

Dear Friend,

First of all, – THANK YOU for your interest to our work and for your time. We love our work and we are grateful for your support! These two months were full of good things and we are glad we can share them with you.

Icon Drawing Workshop in Holy Cross Monastery in West park NY

We have recently had three workshops. Two Advanced ones in Saint Mary’s University (Calgary, Canada), and Gage Academy of Arts (Seattle WA). where we painted icon of Saint John the Baptist and a Drawing one, where we draw 3.5 days with pencils and brushes. (See the photos: http://sacredmurals.com/…icon_painting_courses_usa_canada_2017 )
It was a great time, – lots of challenges and, hope, even more discoveries. From the other hand, even though it seems to us, that all the three workshops went well, I feel that when next time we happen to teach one in the Holy Cross Monastery, we should better connect our workshop with worship. And it is not only about adjusting our time to the schedule of services, it’s much wider – about icons “working” in liturgical space, – both theory and practice.
We have already started thinking about the next year workshop in Holy Cross, but I think we will only be able to launch it in October.
General Icon Painting Workshop model

It’s only July, but both our January Icon Drawing Workshops in Melbourne are filled up or almost filled up. We talked to the ACU and decided to launch one more, this time more universal, – like we did in the past. We called it “General Icon Painting Workshop” intending to say it’s about painting an icon from scratch to the end, going through all sorts of activities we used go to in our daily work. Planning it we mostly thought of potential students, who’d never attended our workshops before, so they could catch up and grab their piece of experience.

And – an important notice, – if you have already signed up for any of previously announced workshops and want to switch to a new one, please, let us know in the nearest time, before it is filled up.
At our latest workshops I was asked many times about our Sources of Pigments, so instead of spelling the links I have promised to list of our suppliers and our favourite colors in current Newsletter. Each of them has some wonderful colors, so the order is just alphabetical and I hope we may continue investigations and share some more in the future.I. Agulis, – armenian colors, sparsely sold in Saint Petersburg. We ordered some their pigments last year, – you can read about our experience in our latest Christmas Newsletter. Our favourite color in their palette is:Violet Light (here is example of this color, used for background: ..annunciation.html)II. Poggi – an italian company with 2 stores in Rome and as we talked to them some years ago, they said they could ship internationally. The prices are also given in euros per kilo, so, it might have a sense to order a package to share, since pigments are nice and finely grinded.Our favourite ones by now are:
Terra Verde Antica (which now I don’t see at their website)
Rosso Pozzuoli
Rosso Veneto
Giallo MargheritaIII. Kremer we buy in Saint Petersburg, also in kilos and the favourites are:
Green UmberII. Zecchi is also sold in Saint Petersburg, we have many things, but really use few:
Coral Powder (see background as an example: (crucifix_2013.html )
Verdaccio Chiaro
Verdaccio Scuro
Herculanum red
Green Umber
Raw UmberPigments with different or unidentifiable sources :
1. Titanium White
2. Shunghite
3. Ocra Roma (Light Yellow Ochre)
4. Golden OchreAnd hopefully there are more to come…
Eight of our latest icons:
Icon of Christ the King by Philip Davydov

Icon of Christ on red background by Olga Shalamova

Icon of Christ 2017 by Olga Shalamova

Icon of Holy Mandylion by Olga Shalamova

Icon of John the Baptist by Olga Shalamova

Icon of Saint Anastasia by OLga Shalamova

Icon of the Mother of God Nicopea by Olga Shalamova

Icon for St. Leonid church in Il’ichevo by Philip Davydov
Working with New Media, – our Youtube channel is slowly growing… Here is the latest addition – a better version of Video, dedicated to varnishing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vcucGcwaoA. Please, leave your comments, – it’s a beginner’s experiment, any constructive critique is appreciated. Within a couple of months from now we think of making some more of this kind, and we will take into account every consideration.

Video: Varnishing the egg tempera

Another video to share, – our Australian friend Sister of Mercy Margaret Broadbent was interviewed almost two months ago: https://vimeo.com/218884778.

margaretInterview with iconographer Margaret Broadbent

And third one is an audio interview with a gentlema, producing pigments: http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/conversations-david-coles/8595382
At our latest workshops I spoke about variety of ways reality can be rendered to become natural part of an image. Here is a good example of how one can study the garments : https://www.flickr.com/…
And last but not least, – Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg has recently published their collection of icons in hight resolution, – enjoy! http://rusmuseumvrm.ru/collections/iconography/index.php?lang=en***
With warmest regard,
Philip (and Olga)

Tons of Models + Workshops

Dear Friend,

Thank you for being our subscriber! We value your time and do our best to publish only most essential news and valuable information. This time we are happy to share some archives of models for icons, finally launch our workshops in Melbourne and publish two icons by Olga Shalamova.

It’s always a great pleasure to share good things and we decided to start sharing our models for icons: http://sacredmurals.com/more_images/_icons_from_mount_sinai.html . Largest number of icons was downloaded by our friend from Princeton University website: http://vrc.princeton.edu/sinai/, but there are also other albums as well. And the new feature is following, – you don’t have to click hundreds of images one-by-one, you can download entire archives and unzip them directly on your computer. Check the menu on the left side from the thumbnails and on the right side from the images, – hope you enjoy it.By the way, – always forget to mention! – All large size album images on our website are clickable, – image works like “NEXT” button when you click it.
It’s been an intense time here and it’s only now we are launching our program for our workshops in Melbourne! Sorry for being late, but this time the task seemed so hard, – we wanted to produce a brand new series of workshops, dedicated to drawing and we made it!
Iconography Drawing Workshop Models

The first workshop practically is made entirely to train drawing, from point of view of theory it will include a series of brand new lectures. The second one is more focused and made for more advanced level students. We also do lots of drawing (mostly different types of garments), but at the end we should come out with a drawings of different half figures and one almost finished image of Saint Anastasia. Please click here to see the details and descriptions >>
A little Icon of Christ

It’s a shame have so few new images, but that’s how it is. Researching for new means and ways is a hard and exhausting work, it takes time and efforts, but it keeps us alive and helps moving forward! This time we only can share two icons by Olga, hoping that more images to come in June.

This Last Supper took more then 2 months to complete. As additional note – the one, which we published in previous Newsletter functioned as one of the sketches for this one, and I think it worked well 🙂 Board size is 56 X 99 cm (about 23 X 40 inches), and it’s done in egg tempera.

Icon the Last Supper
The last but not least, – sometimes we all need promotion! So, we are happy to promote our friend’s work and this time it’s father Justin Mcdonnell, who makes icon boards in Melbourne (Australia). Here he comes:**********
Traditional gessoed icon boards

“Fr Justin McDonnell-based in Melbourne, Australia.

frjustinmcdonnell@gmail.com

0402-324-694.

“Constructed from best quality sustainably/ethically sourced local timbers. All joinery is done by hand using solid timber. Flat or kovcheg, with support struts in the back of the board as required. Boards can be of any size, large or small. Fr Justin is a fully qualified cabinet maker and has worked in a variety of timer related areas-furniture making, wood carving, and is a qualified pipe organ builder. He and his wife, Pani Matushka Lydia, are both dedicated to manufacturing and supplying icon boards of the finest quality to our local iconographic community. We use locally grown timbers and have tried to adapt this ancient craft to the unique conditions present in Australia. We would be very glad to receive your enquiry for any icon board requirements”.

Thank you again for your time and please let us know if you have any questions or comments!

With war,est regards,
Philip and Olga