Icon-painting in Old Russia was a sacred profession. On the one hand, conforming to the canon impoverished the creative process since the iconography of an image was strictly prescribed. But on the other hand it forced a painter to focus all his skill on the essence of his painting.
Traditions affected not only iconography but also materials, on which icons were painted, priming substances, methods of preparing surfaces for painting, dye making techniques, and painting sequence.
In Old Russia tempera, an egg-yolk dye, was used for icon-painting.
Icons were mostly painted on wooden plates, usually of linden. In the north they often took plates of larch and fir and in Pskov - of pine-tree. As a rule a plate was hewed out of a log, the strongest inner layer of the wooden trunk was chosen. This process was laborious and lengthy.
On the front side of a plate an ark was made. It was a shallow hollow confined with the fields lightly raised along the edges of the plate. For a small icon a single plate could be used. Large icons were composed of several plates. The fastening method, the ark depth and the fields width often help to determine the time and the place of an icon's plate manufacturing. The borders of ancient icons of XI-XII-th centuries are wide as a rule and their arks are deep. The later icons have narrow borders and since the XIV century icons were painted sometimes on plates without borders.
Levkas was used as priming, it was composed out of chalk and fish-glue. An icon plate was spread with hot liquid glue several times and then a piece of linen material ("pavoloka") was pasted onto it. After the pavoloka had dried it was coated with levkas. Levkas was applied in several movements, layer by layer. The surface of levkas was thoroughly slicked and occasionally polished. Sometimes a relief was drawn on the levkas. Beginning from the XII century the gilt levkas of icons was engraved. Sometimes such pattern engraving was made on the nimbus. Later on, beginning from the XVI century, the carving on the levkas was performed before painting in order to create a relief pattern. Then the relief was gilded.
A drawing was implemented on the prepared surface of the prime. Initially the first drawing of images was accomplished, then the second, the detailed one. The first drawing was made with a slight touch of a soft birch twigs charcoal, and the second - with black or brown dye.
Some icons were reproduced according to the "originals" or to the copies, acquired from the prototypes.
After that the painting itself was begun. First everything necessary was gilded: the icon's fields, the light, the nimbuses, and the folds of the clothes. Then the clothes, the buildings and the landscape were drawn. At the final stage the faces (liks) were painted. The finished image was covered with oil varnish.
The work with dyes was carried out in a strict sequence. First the areas confined with the outlines of the drawing were covered with thin layers of corresponding dyes in the following order: the background, the mountains, the buildings, the clothes, the naked parts of the body, and the faces. After that the prominent details of objects were brightened. Little by little adding white to dyes an icon-painter covered smaller and smaller areas. The last strokes were made with pure white.
The darkened and deep areas were sometimes covered with a superfine layer of a dark dye in order to add third-dimensional effect. After that the features and the hair were drawn in thin lines.
Then light flashes with white or ochre with a large portion of whitening were added to the prominent features: the forehead, the cheek-bones, the nose, the hair locks. The rouge was painted after that. The lips, the cheeks, the end of the nose, the lobes of the ears and the corners of the eyes were covered with red dye. Then the pupils of the eyes, the hair, the eyebrows, the moustache and the beard were painted with liquid brown dye.
The patterns, "originals", served as guides for icon-painting. They contained indications on how this or that image had to look.
Tempera painting required expertise and high capacity for drawing, that could be achieved during the long years of apprenticeship. Icon-painting was a great creative work and icon-painters were specially prepared for performing "the deed of icon creating".
It was an act of communication with God and required spiritual and physical purification "… when writing a holy icon he touched the food only on Saturdays and Sundays, being restless day and night. He spent nights in wakefulness, praying and obeisance. At daytime he devoted himself to icon-painting with humility, non-possessiveness, purity, patience, fast, love, and God-thinking."
Successfully drawn images were thought to be painted not by a painter but by God. Very few names of Old Russian painters have remembered. If the hands of a painter were used by God for creating an icon, it was inappropriate to mention the man's name.
On the other hand, icon-painting was a sacred communication with God. It was unnecessary to name oneself, because God new the one who humbly and prayerfully tried to reproduce the Prototype.
Unfortunately the dried oily varnish, grows dark with time. Approximately 80 years after the covering of an icon the pellicle of varnish becomes black and almost completely hides the painting. It was necessary to "renew" those icons. A new painting was added, with which the painter intended to reproduce the drawing hidden under the blackened oil. New paintings covered old icons layer by layer. Sometimes quite another image was painted.