I’ve continued to make more icons. I’ve made Jesus and Mary, Peter & Paul, Saint John the Apostle, Saint Abigail, Saint Photini, and that’s it right now. 

I’d like to do one of Mary kissing her Child, Saint Joseph, and a nice Rublev Christ on that sort of strange geometry he did in the Hagia Sophia. Then the twelve apostles.

This technique works best with individual portraits, or at least pretty discrete images with hard boundaries. I attempted to do Saint George but it did not work very well. The dragon, the princess...it looked like there were two in this particular illustration, the castle, the spear, the whole thing was a mess. It’s possible that a different illustration could work better but, I don’t know. 

I have loads of icons now that I need to trim and sand and oil. It’d be nice to rub them with bees wax, that’d smell right, I think. 

I have four in my living room and an old one that I didn’t make in my office. I think there’ll be more throughout the house as the days go on, but really I’d like to sell them. But that’s neither here nor there. 

The portrait of Jesus by my desk is ancient, well, it’s a reproduction of something ancient. Today was a difficult day of work and seeing him and thinking of him was a comfort in it. I hope it continues to be a comfort.

I’ve been playing Sindome again, as I think I mentioned. My character is Orthodox, and very good at it. He actually meditates. I’ve become friends with a different character who roleplays as a prostitute. We talk about religion a lot. I highly doubt their player is a person of faith, and their character most definitely is not. But they might be soon. 
That’d be funny. 

I wonder where the evangelism being done in character stops, and it starts to be real, to the player on the other side of the monitor. It feels fairly real to me. The thoughts I’m forced to have to explain the worldview of this character are essentially 1:1 the thoughts I have to explain my own. He’s more of an ascetic than I am, he’s a better person, but he’s also simpler. So that helps.