Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Ethiopian Icon: Line figures up frontally and divide the ground into flat color fields
- Type
- Set in Ethiopian Icon's manner (Keep inscriptions inside the frame and treat letters as part of the image), and let Russian Icon's lettering (Only abbreviated holy names, written thin in red over the gold) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Ethiopian Icon's material (Dense pigment laid flat on panel or parchment, outlined in heavy black); bring in exactly one thing from Russian Icon (Gesso built on panel, egg tempera and gold leaf in layers).
- Colour
- Build on #c7a670, #a3422d, #090506 and admit one accent from #e4c592, #dc6758, #3a4661.
Where they fight
- Ethiopian Icon and Russian Icon both belong to Icon Painting, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
- Ethiopian Icon and Russian Icon stand roughly 400 years apart. Keep one of them recognisably period rather than letting both drift into the middle.
Caution
- Ethiopian Icon Extracting the large eyes as a style breaks the balance of heavy outline and flat color, and the result becomes cartoon caricature.
- Russian Icon Adding naturalistic perspective and shading turns the window for prayer into a scene to look at, and reverse perspective stops working.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Ethiopian Icon (style, 14th century–) and their accent from Russian Icon (style, 10th–17th century / continuing). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Ethiopian Icon exists for: sacred narrative that must read through flat color and outline alone, or making a small folding altar that works as a painting. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Ethiopian Icon - Large almond-shaped eyes - Bold outlines - Vivid flat color - Folding triptychs Composition: Line figures up frontally and divide the ground into flat color fields. Type and lettering: Keep inscriptions inside the frame and treat letters as part of the image. ## Accent comes from Russian Icon, used sparingly - The timelessness of gold ground - Reverse perspective - Stylized bodies - The image as object of prayer Let one material quality come from it: Gesso built on panel, egg tempera and gold leaf in layers. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #c7a670, carry the structure in #a3422d and #090506, and let a single accent come from #dc6758. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: intimacy, exhilaration, trust, calm, luxury. ## Where they fight - Ethiopian Icon and Russian Icon both belong to Icon Painting, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable. - Ethiopian Icon and Russian Icon stand roughly 400 years apart. Keep one of them recognisably period rather than letting both drift into the middle. ## What goes wrong - Ethiopian Icon: Extracting the large eyes as a style breaks the balance of heavy outline and flat color, and the result becomes cartoon caricature. - Russian Icon: Adding naturalistic perspective and shading turns the window for prayer into a scene to look at, and reverse perspective stops working. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Ethiopian Icon 14th century– / Style / Icon Painting
Large almond eyes, heavy outlines and vivid flat color give the sacred painting of Ethiopian Orthodoxy its own manner. The Byzantine inheritance is rewritten there in an African sense of form.
- Russian Icon 10th–17th century / continuing / Style / Icon Painting
The icon tradition inherited from Byzantium uses reverse perspective, gold grounds and stylized bodies so that the panel becomes a window for prayer rather than a picture to look at. Rublev's Trinity marks its spiritual summit.
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