Iconography Pigments
Iconography pigments are pure colour ground to a fine powder, the raw material of egg tempera and of every artist’s paint. The icon painter mixes them fresh at the palette, and many painters use them to make their own colours. The range runs from the earths, ochres and umbers for base tones and faces, to strong pure colours.
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Price range: 2.50 € through 28.80 €Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page -
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Iconography pigments are pure colour, finely ground, and they are the raw material of egg tempera. The paint is prepared fresh as the work asks: a little pigment on the palette, drops of egg emulsion, and mixing to the texture of thin cream. Small amounts go a long way, and the powder that remains keeps in its jar indefinitely.
The Byzantine palette rests on the earths. Ochres, siennas, and umbers build the base tones and the faces, and the lights rise over them layer by layer. Around them, the strong pure colours take the garments, grounds, and lettering: reds, blues, greens, and whites with high covering power and lasting strength, for works meant to endure.
The same powders are the raw material of every artist’s paint, and many painters work with them beyond iconography, making their own colours: ground into linseed oil they become oils, into gum arabic watercolour, into acrylic binder acrylics. The painter controls the strength, texture, and body of the colour directly, and reaches shades that exist in no tube.
The same pigments work beyond the egg, with glues and other binders, in wall painting and craft.
Art & Colour carries iconography pigments in a wide range of colours, beside the iconography brushes, gold leaf, and prepared panels of the icon workshop.