I've gone green, even with art (this style of sacred art uses natural dry pigments). I just completed a six day workshop on iconography taught by Fr. Damian Higgins! Father Damian, heiromonk, is a canonical priest iconographer of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the United States and is also the director of the Holy Wisdom School of Iconography.
This was the best art workshop I have ever taken. Random fact I learned: iconography goes back to 4th or 7th century, in Africa.
“It is because God loved us that He turned a visible face toward us, a human face, the face of Christ. God who became man. He turned to us a face of absolute beauty, a face filled with the fullness of God and the fullness of being. It is the love of this beauty, and the beauty of this love which the icon bears and reveals. For this reason, an icon must be a thing of beauty. The colors and the paint of the icon, must be bright as precious stones blazing with flames of light. The background of the icon may be arrayed with gold and jewels to signify the beauty and glory of heaven; where God resides. The place which is the home of ‘spiritual bodies’ pictured in icons. The saving truth of Christ cannot be conveyed by words alone. The vital forces so important in the life of a Christian must be awakened by the presentation of beauty. And that kind of extreme beauty is found in the icon.” – Archbishop Joseph Raya (+2005)
for more on iconography and Father Damian Higgins:
holywisdomicons.wordpress.com
