Step-by-step instructions for painting icons, from original drawings through finished product. This is the sequel to the authors previous work, A Brush with God, for advanced beginners, intermediate, and advanced iconographers. It presents greater detail and instructions for creating entirely new icons. One major feature of this book is the full-page sketches that artists can photocopy and use as the basis of their own icons, providing a unique and much-requested resource. Includes eight full-color plates of the author's original icons.

Chapters and topics include:

1. Introduction and contemporary reflections on iconography, spirituality, and technique.


2. Highlighting folds on full-length figures, including black and white renderings of draped legs, arms, and torsos.


3. Architectural and landscape renderings in Byzantine iconography, including background shadow and highlighting techniques, plus inverse perspective.


4. Festal icons, involving multiple figures, landscapes, architecture, furniture, vegetation, and animals.


5. Construction of heads, figures, and analysis of whole compositions, sacred geometry and proportion.