brightening of the face

The face is the most important thing of an icon and will decide, if an icon is "speaking" or not. I like to do it directly after the ground-colours are laid on, though normally one first does brightening of all the surroundings (mountains, houses, plants ...) and robes and the brightening of the face comes last.

In general there are 3 brightenings.
1. The ground-colour of the face is mixed with ochre.

2. Pure ockre with a bit of red and white is used and
3. more white is added on the smaller parts.

At a very last step the "lights" will be set in very thin lines in pure white. This is here not yet done.

You see here in addition to the 3rd brightening the already finished guilding of the robe of Jesus and the finished mountains in the background.