https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=WOtQe-heamA
All right. Here we are. First time I do this. All right. Well, eliminate the echo here. All right. And so I have a tablet next to me also. So I’ll be able to see the chat. So hopefully my massive disability technology won’t be a hindrance. So let’s see how this goes. So one of the things that… Last week we reached 100,000 subscribers on the YouTube channel. And so I asked a bunch of people on social media what they would like. One of the biggest answer was to have my brother back on the channel, which I would absolutely love. But I don’t think it’s going to happen. The other thing that came on a lot was a commentary on Revelation, which I am starting. I’ve already done one video. We’ll do another video. And then possibly a third video. Not sure yet. And yet another thing that appeared was people saying they wanted to see a live carving. And so I thought, OK, sure, I could do that. That’s fine. So I’ve got a small carving that I need to do. And so let’s do it. I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish the whole thing while I’m doing the livestream. But who knows? We’ll see. We’ll see how it goes. So the small carving is a small carving of the Mother of God. And I’m doing it on a piece of steatite, a piece of soapstone, you can see here. And so how I do it is this is a drawing that I did of the Mother of God that I used for this particular pattern. And I just used a piece of carbon paper underneath because I need to trace the drawing on the stone. So I’m really starting, guys, from the beginning, I guess. I could have started after I could have started after making the drawing. But I was all excited about doing this because I had never done it before. So I’m going to try to take a look at the chat once in a while. There are no moderators, as I know of, unless someone, unless like Brad or Lisa, decide to hop in when they notice this. I didn’t warn them that I was doing this. So there are no moderators. So it’s possible that things will get a little loopy in the comment section in the chat. Sorry if that happens. Just ignore the ignore the trolls. So one of the really interesting things that happened last week, I was kind of absent from social media. I was supposed to go. I was supposed to go to Saskatoon to teach a carving class. And because of Covid, it was just complicated. It was like semi-legal for me to stay with them and everything. Everything was suspicious. So I decided not to go. And there are other reasons, too, like just at home. It was just better that I stay home. And so they asked me if I could maybe carve make a carving training, record it and send them the videos. And so I thought, OK, yeah, I could do that. That’s not a problem. And I kind of know how fast I carve things. So I thought it could work. And so I grossly misinterpreter, like I grossly mistook how much time it was going to take me. It took me like five times more than what I what I had planned on because of the editing, because I kept I kept I kept having some technical problems with the camera and stuff and lighting and all that. So many problems. Anyways, so I barely slept last week because I spent all night editing these videos for carving and stuff. So what I want when I’m doing this tracing is I really just want the basic lines for myself. If I was if I was teaching a class, I would tell you to trace all the lines because it’s good to get to know get to know the image. But, you know, I I really I know this image so well because I’ve carved it so many times. So that’s all I’m going to put on there. So Jonathan Henry asked, How did you come up with the design for the drawing? And if you made it up from scratch, how do you decide with symbolism to add style to use? So the drawing is based on a traditional image. It’s a it’s an image of the of the Mother of God supplicant. It would be it would be an image that would be next to Christ. And so you can imagine her head. She’s bowing and next to it here would be an image of Christ. And on the other side would be an image of St. John the Baptist, which is called the deus is so three images together. And and so usually you see the whole image. Actually, I can show you because this was that this is the carving I was working on for the training last week. And so you can see this is a full image of the type of image that would be in this deus is so you can see St. John the Baptist with his arms out showing us Christ who would be in the middle and the Mother of God on the other side. But now it’s just the face of the Mother of God. So the idea is I base my I base my drawing on a traditional pattern. But obviously there is some there is some leeway to adjust it to what you want, you know, to emphasize different things and to especially if I’m carving. If I’m carving, I need to I need to adjust the oh, I need to just a little bit here. It’s going to be a little sketchy at the beginning because I I’m not I’ve never done this before. All right. So in a carving, there are certain things in a carving that are difficult to do that are not the same as a painting like there are some things in painting that you can’t do in carving. So you need to make sure that your design is appropriate for carving. But this image is really just a basic image of of the Mother of God, which would be recognized by any Christian Orthodox Christian that goes to church because it’s the type of image which would be which would also be in the deus is on on the on the iconostasis. If someone has a big iconostasis, this this type of image would be on the iconostasis. So someone asked if I’m still taking commissions and the answer is I am not taking commissions at this time. Right now, my waiting list is like two years and and you know, it got really bad because of the flooding in my house because I was out of the workshop. It was just hard to to stay focused on on the carving. I was still carving, but it was just really difficult to get a nice workflow. But now from since but during the time of the flood, I hired an assistant who’s helping me. And so I’m hoping that that will really kind of speed things up. If you if you guys are following my Patreon carving project, I have a so I have like two Patreon projects, one for the videos, one for carving. If you’re following the carving one, you’ll see his his kind of work. We’re designing more ornamental stuff with him. He was a mosaist before he started working for me. He’s actually an old friend from college that I’ve known since I was like 17. And and so he’s he’s working on kind of ornamental designs with mosaics and using different patterns, which will then integrate into more elaborate carvings. And so I’m focusing on having some some more elaborate carvings. Like I’m really excited right now because Jordan Peterson ordered two, like three very large carvings, which he said, you know, make them the best that you can, like the best that you’ve ever done. So I always like that because it gives me a lot of leeway to just go nuts. So we’re going to integrate a lot of the stuff where we’re we’re designing. But his commission he’s going to get in two years. I basically took his commission because I really, really wanted to do it because it was really elaborate. But all the other commissions I’m sadly not taking right now, hopefully in a year or so. I’ll open up commissions again. And so what I need to do at first is I basically need to free up the space. So I’m taking out just outlining the shape and then taking out the background. As you can see, this is turning this table that turns is a huge help. So I hope the video is out full in the channel. I will probably just leave it on the channel. Let’s say something horribly stupid, which I would be surprised that would happen. So the actually exciting things is that so this this workshop that I did last week that I that I put together for these people in Saskatoon is basically like a full on online recorded workshop with explanations and like three cameras where you can see the carving from two angles. And you can hear me speak. So I’m actually really considering putting it out online as like an online course that I could sell that people could sign up for. So look out for that in the next. I don’t know when. But hopefully I’ll have time to get that ready. But I’d really like to do that because it’s really annoying. There are a lot of really promising people that were taking my icon carving classes, but now with COVID everything is just so dead. Thunderwolf asked if God said has taken up my conversation challenge and the answer is no. God said is ignoring my. I actually wrote him an email to and asked if he wanted to talk to me. But I’m sure he must find me to be very strange, this strange Christian guy. And I’m sure like he doesn’t he doesn’t understand what relevance it would have to talk to me. Someone says I bet you could have an epic jack-o-lantern. Yeah, in the past few years I’ve actually done that with the kids. Carved some pretty intense Halloween pumpkins. But not this year though for some reason. I think this year because we were fixing up our house and we just didn’t have time. And because of COVID and everything Halloween was almost cancelled. But usually we take the time. I spend some time with my kids and we spend like half a day carving some epic pumpkins. Because both of my daughters are quite artistic. Hopefully this isn’t like chalk on a like fingernails on a chalkboard for you guys. Sorry. So it’s a mix of mallet and then using just pushing with my hand to scrape. The mallet will leave some like mate massive marks on there. But if I scrape it then. Then I can remove that. This dust is super toxic. It’s silica dust so it just gets in your lungs and kills you. So I have to be more attentive to that. And it says having storytellers here makes me more sure about the theory that big movies follow Jonathan. I mean you guys probably know that I’ve done a few videos with Thomas from the storyteller. There’s a few videos that were actually together online. I did a video also with them for their channel. On what was it on? It was on. I got the name of that movie with the big robots. And also Thomas has edited a lot of my movie videos. And so we got along pretty well for the last few years. Pacific Rim. Yes, of course. Man, I’m an idiot. Yeah, we did a video on Pacific Rim together. And I kept mispronouncing Jaegers. I kept saying Jaegers I think. And then people would criticize me. I’ve been so out of movies. I just don’t watch movies anymore. I think it’s because I’m just struggling with the stories now. I made a few videos criticizing them but it’s like do I really want to subject myself to this all the time? And so I watched. Everybody was telling me what is One Division about? You should watch One Division. You should watch One Division. We’re trying to understand it. And so I did. I watched One Division. And my goodness. If you didn’t think it was the end of the world yet, just watch One Division. And now you can be pretty sure that it’s the end of the world. I wonder, like watching One Division, I wonder if people made that to give you sympathy for people who were like burning witches. Because seriously, that series, like the ending, I’m not going to spoil it for whoever wants to watch it. But the ending of that series is so insane. Like it is so insane that you wonder what exactly are they thinking? Someone asked if working alone if I listen to music. Yes. I listen to, I listen to, I like, I’d rather listen to podcasts. I listen to podcasts and I also listen to books. And so I either I read books on Audible or I actually have like a reader, like an electronic reader that just reads me PDFs. And so often I’ll read books. I’ll read books while I’m working. My mind is actually pretty available while I’m working. So storyteller says I’m at the finale. It’s been confusing to say the least. Yeah, you’re going to love it. I mean, anyways, you can tell I’d like to talk. I would be good to talk to you about it, Thomas, because I’m curious. I’d be curious to know what you think of it. To me, it was just like it’s basically it’s like one division is basically a defense of the matrix is what I would call it. That’s what I would say. It’s like what if the matrix was a good thing or at least justifiable? Right. It’s like, you know, we’re not saying it’s good, but we’re saying there are reasons, you know, and you know, you should understand the reasons. So that’s what I think one of it is very disturbing. But it’s interesting, like the link between between the idea of the occult and and and and artificial intelligence, you know, the idea that there’s some like occult force preserving the artificial intelligence. It’s like really, is that is that what you want us to is that the message you want to give us? Because we kind of think that already, but, you know, we’re not going to say it out loud most of the time. So the first part of the carving is the boring part. It’s actually not it’s boring in the sense that it’s just carving, carving the halo and carving the background. But it’s also good because it’s a it’s a nice like it gets you ready for the carving because it’s not as doesn’t ask much of you except to just do it. So. So I want the like I want all the background and this halo to be nice and clean like this. So. Calvin Sweeney asked if I reached out to Tim Mackey with the Bible Project. Yes, I did. I made that effort. I went and found the on their email they have on their website, they have an email for press like. And so I went and wrote them an email. Can I explain what I’m doing and ask them if Tim could come on the channel? But they told me that he is not doing interviews right now. So that was the answer I got. So if anybody has an in to the Bible Project or an in to Gatsad, you need to convince them of how important it would be. Really bad at inviting people to go on my channel. I’ve been pretty much just when people write me, I that’s when I usually kind of have them on my channel after they’ve written me. That’s usually been most mostly been how it’s happened or like some exchange on Twitter, some exchange on social media. And then it kind of prompts me to invite them. But yeah, I probably need to be a bit more a bit more aggressive about that. One of the interesting things that might be happening is not 100 percent sure, but I might I might participate in with Unbelievable, that show, that British show that kind of kind of pits believers and atheists against each other. And so that would be cool if that could happen. That’d be nice. So someone asks, is there a ritual prayer that you say while carving? No, I usually usually I do my morning prayers and, you know, and do the Jesus prayer for a while. And then I come to the workshop. You know, that’s usually the way I do it. I don’t necessarily. I think that ideally I could probably do the Jesus prayer while I’m carving. But it’s just not a discipline that I’ve developed. I kind of see my carving time as a time to learn stuff and to read. So I’m basically going over the lines and the lines. I mean, the importance of the lines is that every line basically is like a change of level. And so I need to to remove some stone so that I can then create that difference in levels that will be there. So that’s one of my thoughts on the dietary restrictions in the Old Testament. And I think that they’re interesting in terms of understanding symbolism. They help you understand the relationship between pure and impure. And they can help you understand quite a few things, actually. But I don’t Christians don’t practice those. Christians have different restrictions which are linked to fasting and not eating meat itself. And so you can understand the not eating meat rather than just the idea of pure or impure animals. You can understand the not eating meat rather as this momentary return to the garden. Because in the Garden of Eden they didn’t eat meat. And so monks actually in the Orthodox tradition don’t eat meat in theory. I mean, obviously, I’m sure some do, but in theory they’re not supposed to eat meat. And so right now is Lent. And so during Lent, Orthodox Christians don’t eat any animal products in theory. And so no eggs, no animal fat, none of that. And no fish. But it depends. I mean, obviously, people have different strictures. And some people have health issues that will affect or not just health issues, but sometimes also kind of social issues will make it very difficult to fast. The purpose of the fast is not just to practice the rules, right? But it’s mostly to learn to abstain. And then to kind of watch yourself. To watch yourself and realize just how much you are a slave of your passions, how much you justify your own behavior. So failing during Lent is sometimes good to help you see that you’re not in control of your own. You’re not totally in control of your own self. So someone asks, you know, lost the tradition of fasting, any advice? I mean, the early Christians used to fast twice a week on Wednesdays and Fridays, which is a tradition which is still there. And like I said, there are different ways to do it depending on your situation. For example, like if you can’t fast for meat for some reason, you know, like it’s just not possible in your context or whatever it is, then you can you can sometimes just do a meal a day in the evening. So that’s a way to fast as well. Sometimes people do both. Like some people will do just vegetables and one meal a day. And in theory, like in theory, for example, you’re not even in during Lent, you’re not supposed to eat oil like you’re supposed to have vegetables without oil. And so like I can’t like I can’t do that. It’s just too hard in my situation. So and so I don’t do that. So everybody has kind of their thing and it’s good to to just be aware of it. And if you have a spiritual father to kind of discuss it with your spiritual father. Someone says when you’re done, please put it a list of started tools in the description. The problem with this is that even if I put a list of started tools, all these tools are most of these tools I made. And so it’s like, you know, this is a this is actually a punching tool, which I grind grind down because it has high high carbon steel. So I just grind it down to make it the shape I want. If you look at this tool, for example, this is just a wood, a wood, I guess not called it a chisel. Yeah, I guess a wood chisel. It’s a flat one. And and then I round it off like I round off the top a little bit just because it to make it do what I want it to do. So so it’s tough. This is a wood. This is actually just a wood carving tool. It’s like a fell, a fell wood carving tool that works really well for small spots. So it’s hard to write down like what what you need because most of my tools for stone, at least I’ve made or kind of graph from here and there. Wood carving tools are more standard. So it’s probably like when I teach, for example, like the carving class I did online that I’m going to put out there is probably going to be it’s good to wood class because it’s it’s just more simple. And you can get material very easily like this stone, even if even if I gave you the tools to I don’t know where you would get the stone. I import this stone from Kenya. And so you need to get something analogous, which I’m not sure where you get. So this is kind of soapstone, a steatite, but it’s not a it’s a it’s pretty dense. It’s not as as porous and as soft as the soapstone, for example, that I could get here in Canada. Like Inuit, Inuit. So like native communities here up north, you know, kind of Eskimo, I guess you would call them. They carve soapstone, but the soapstone they carve is very different. It’s like this dark green soapstone. I often feel like I’m the luckiest person in the world because I get to think about things and make and make YouTube videos and write about more, let’s say, high or abstract ideas. And then I get to like come into my workshop and just bang at a piece of stone with a mallet for a few hours. So it’s a nice it’s a nice balance. It’s what it feels like sometimes. So I want to create these three these three fold these three steps. It’s either three folds here in her homeophorium, her her veil and then three steps on this side. So that’s kind of what I’m working. Okay. Someone says I was able to get my first OCA liturgy. Just excited to share it with you. That’s awesome. Daniel DiMarco. Is that right? So where are where are you Daniel? Where like what what state are you tending liturgy in? Hey, Alistair Roberts is there. That’s awesome. Nice to see you, Alistair. I want to I want to have you back on my channel, by the way. I keep thinking that I should write you and then we should have another discussion and then I then I just then I just forget because I’m like that. But if you’d like, I would really cool to have you back on the channel. So Daniel DiMarco says northern New Jersey. Nice. It’s good to know you can go like we just until until two days ago, we had an eight o’clock curfew and we could only be 10 people in church. And so because of that, we would have to like trade off. We would you would sign up on a list and they would prioritize people that weren’t there the week before that, you know, that hadn’t gone yet. And so it’s been kind of hit and miss. I’ve been going to church every two weeks pretty much. But so they just changed that a few days ago. And so now it’s 100 people, which means that for us, at least my church is pretty much going to be open enough for everybody. So I’m pretty excited about that. I’m probably probably going to be able to go to annunciation this week. So Greg Holm asks, do you do printmaking as well or just carving? No, I don’t do printmaking. I mean, I’m doing some drawings. I’m thinking about doing printmaking. That’s definitely something that I’m considering just because it’s like right now I have I guess I have the problem that the demand for what I’m doing is too high and I can’t I can’t. I can’t make enough things. And I also don’t want to raise my prices too much because I’m making sacred art. Like it’s not like I’m making secular art. So I need to be careful. And so I thought maybe if I did printmaking, I could have things that are still reasonably priced, but I could make I could make more. This is kind of funky. I see well. Sorry. It’s not the best view of this. First time technical. I feel like I could give you guys a better view of this. Maybe if I did this. That I think that’s closer. Yeah, I think it’s better. All right. I think it’s better. All right. So the tricky thing with these with this carving. I’ll tell you the little secret of this carving is that her fold her her. Her veil folds. So when it folds, it goes it goes around and back. So this is always the tricky thing. So when I’m teaching carving to people, this is where everybody gets confused because you have to show that the veil is on was on this side here and then goes underneath there. So it’s actually some of the fun part to me at least is creating those relationships. So Z asked me what I think of Tarkovsky’s Rubev. Yeah, I mean, Tarkovsky is amazing. And I think for sure he’s definitely worth spending time with. You know, if he’s definitely for people who want to kind of understand how to create or to bring about some of the questions, you know, that about the Christian ethos in movies in a deeper way, like not just a not not a superficial. You know, propagandistic way. But I think that Tarkovsky for sure. I don’t even know if he was a Christian, but he definitely was imbibed with a lot of years. He’s not dead, is he? That he’s imbibed with kind of Orthodox ethos. Someone asked if if I have something to propose to learn about orthodoxy, a basic thing. I mean, I always propose there’s a book called The Orthodox Way by Metropolitan Callisto Swear. It’s called The Orthodox Way. And it’s a very it’s a book written for Westerners. And so it’s written to kind of help people understand what what the spiritual life is and what the vision of the spiritual life in orthodoxy is. It’s very easily accessible. Someone asked if I listen to music. I guess I didn’t answer that properly the other day. The other day, like just before I listened to I listen mostly to podcasts and books. But once in a while, I listen to music. I used to listen to a lot more music, but I would say in the past, like seven, seven years, maybe I don’t listen to a lot of music anymore. So whatever time I have to listen, I listen to to content. But if I like when I’m sleepy, let’s say during the day, if I’m tired and I’m trying to carve, but I’m just kind of not being able to focus and I feel kind of drained, then I’ll listen to music. So when I ask if I listen to and then they ask if I listen to Dirt Poor Robin’s music. And yes, I do listen to Dirt Poor Robin’s music. I’m actually enjoying it quite a bit these days. I’ll put my car and stuff. I’ll put it on. So Storytellers asked what I think of Terrence Malick and his and and his last movie, Hidden Life. I haven’t watched it because the thing is the Terrence Malick movies, I really struggle with them. But so many people have told me about Hidden Life that I probably should watch it. But it’s like, what was that other one with the dinosaurs? I really struggled with that movie. I feel like there’s at least the ones I’ve watched. I feel like there’s a lot of meandering, but I should I should probably watch it. I should probably watch Hidden Life. Like I said, I really don’t watch a lot of movies. And it’s weird because when I do, I’d rather watch like a stupid, like a big stupid movie with my kids. Because my kids, I usually now watch most of the stuff I watch, I watch with my kids. It’s kind of like also a time to just kind of hang out with them. So someone asked if I saw Silence by Martin Scorsese. Yes, I did. An interesting story. I actually watched Silence by Martin Scorsese for the first time at a retreat for Orthodox priests. They invited me to come do like to be like the speaker at their retreat. And one of the things they wanted to do is to like watch a movie and then have me interpret it. And I never seen Silence, so I watched it with them. And I have to say it was very disturbing movie. I find it very disturbing. Movies like that, they’re disturbing because they actually, it’s like you’d almost rather people not make movies about Christian subjects if they’re going to be weird about it. It’s almost rather they didn’t. Because when they do, then it comes close to something. You know, for example, like they’re trying to come close to the idea of of self sacrifice and of and the idea of let’s say the love of others. But they they they have this weird then they they present this weird thing where it’s it’s almost the idea that if you love others and you will deny Christ out of your love for others. And it’s like, ah, no, you know what? Sorry. It’s not just doesn’t work. I just I just I’m not getting on board in your with your little moral dilemma that you’re trying to present to me here. And this idea that like Christ would would want would want someone to deny him. Just very, very, very disturbing. So I didn’t I didn’t particularly like that. Sorry if I ruined the movie for you guys. Like I never asked me about never asked me like about about movies because I really don’t care about the spoilers thing. Like I often don’t care about being spoiled on the movie myself because that’s not why I watch movies or why I mean what I why I would spend time on it. And so and so sorry if I spoiled the movie for you guys. As someone says, they highly recommend the island. Yeah, the island is very good. I really, really like that. Someone asked me who are my favorite historic iconographers? You know, it’s funny that you ask that because I really don’t have I don’t have that vision of iconography. So it’s like if I. Because, for example, like an icon carving, the iconographers are known. So you could say that like, let’s say my favorite, my favorite iconographers are whoever it is that carved those. Those like ninth, tenth century ivories that were done in the Byzantine court after the icon after iconoclasm. It’s like those I feel like those carvings, I base a lot of my work on whatever was developed in those carvings. And so that’s pretty much how I see it. You know, and so what I mean, let’s say. I really like. I really like, let’s say, Pansalinos because he has he kind of has volume to his work. And so it’s interesting to think about it in terms of carving for myself. And so, of course, I love rubles icons and I love that period of Russian iconography as well. But I also really love Western medieval art. And so, you know, there’s some, for example, if you think of the. A lot of my work is is also kind of based on what I guess you could call the kind of 10th century, 12th century. Byzantine, Normand synthesis. You could call it like whatever, whatever, whatever kind of movement created the great the great churches in Sicily. Those that moment, I think, is a really kind of crucial moment. And so a lot of my work is based on that. And it’s something it’s a very there’s a universal aspect to that that style that got developed at that time. So one of the things that one of my contentions, I would say, is that although we live in a time of mixture and a time of confusion, you would say, there’s also an opportunity in that moment, which is that whatever it is that gives us the mixture and the the the confusion, there’s something in that which can also bring about a kind of synthesis. So if you think about the problem of iconography right now, is that it’s not I mean the problem, the reality of iconography is that in every other period of time in the history of iconography, people would learn from some master and would would maybe travel with them and then see churches that were done and then would have sketchbooks with the different the different subjects inside. And so that’s how they would learn. And so like the way we learn is we have access to all the very best icons still available online and we can flip through them like we flip through a catalog. And so that has a massive effect on our psyche and the way we read art and the way we understand the tradition. And so and so there’s something that’s nefarious about that of having access to all the very best icons and at your fingertips. But there’s also something like in the juxtaposition, there’s also something which is kind of weird and and hybrid about it. But I think that in that there’s also the possibility of having some distance of kind of looking at things from a distance, which is alienating, but can also with what can also bring about a kind of synthesis. And so that’s kind of the vision that I have for what I’m doing and also kind of the vision I have for the best like the vision I have of the best iconographers that are working today, which is to create a synthetic icon, iconographic style and iconographic language, you could say. So it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t mean that it’s all going to be the same. It’s actually there will be there’s difference in there. But that’s been my approach at least. So there’s an ass like, for example, like in my carving, there’s an aspect of my carving. Let’s say the way I make faces, which is which is actually probably more akin to something which is more erratic or more schematized, you would say something you could find maybe in like Western medieval art or maybe a hint of Coptic or kind of Syrian iconography in the sense of the kind of simpler, less less idiosyncratic aspect in the face. And so I think it has something to do with stone itself. Like that’s that the material also lends itself to that kind of interpretation. So someone asked, what can you say about geometric patterns as constituting art as you see in Islamic art? I really love geometric patterns. I’m not good at them in the sense that they require a certain mindset, which I don’t think I really have. Like and I you know, there’s a lot of Islamic art, which is very beautiful and very, very impressive. And so to ask that is is is an interesting idea. So, for example, like the idea, if anybody would say that they have a problem with that, you know, it would be extremely problematic because the for example, the in most traditional Orthodox churches that would have been in the Mediterranean, the the the rugs on the floor would probably have come from Islamic countries because of that beautiful ornamental capacity that they had, you know, in terms of geometry and in terms of repetitive patterns. And so I have no problem with that at all. In fact, I think that it’s interesting to to take some like an Islamic manuscript, for example, like to take some of that ornamentation and to use it in my in my designs or the designs that I’m working with my assistant on. There there’s always a discussion, you know, there’s an idea that people have in terms of let’s say the medieval world as this kind of isolated world nobody was in contact with anybody. But that is not the case. There was always a discussion, you know, between between these different cultures and styles. And and so there was definitely different influences going around. So there’s definitely an influence on, let’s say, between Byzantine art and Persian miniature, you know, between Byzantine art to Persian miniature to to Mughal Indian miniature to. So there’s all these like relationships that create themselves. You know, so Hagia Sophia, the pattern of the cross, the dome and the cross or the dome and the square, was really perfected in Christianity with Justinian and then became the model for pretty much all of Islamic architecture. You know, and so Islamic architecture is really like a dome on a square or dome on an octagon. And then coming back the other way, then all of the a lot of the ornamentation, the very powerful geometric work that was done by Islamic artists, then kind of flooded back into Western miniature and then also Byzantine miniature as well. So. So I have some tools that I’ve rounded out more. You guys want to see these are really more round. And so if I want to create some like a dip. One of the tricks, one of the tricks of low relief carving is that you want to you want to use as little space as possible to to nonetheless give a sense of the form. So a way to do it sometimes is to create these little bowls with an edge on each side. And then that edge on each side will will emphasize the light more will kind of make the form pop out. So. So I have a question that asks common sense culture asking for projects like this. I often have to start over. And how does that change since you started? To be honest, I almost never have to start over. When I started, I made a few mistakes at the beginning, like in the very first year. And I made a few mistakes in the first year. And I made a few mistakes in the first year. And I made a few mistakes in the first year. And I made a few mistakes in the first year. And I made a few mistakes in the first year. And I made a few mistakes in the first year. And I made a few mistakes in the first year. And I made a few mistakes in the first year. And I made a few mistakes in the first year. And so twice I made the frame too tight. And then when I pushed across and it just broke after I had carved the whole thing. And so I don’t do that anymore. I don’t make that mistake anymore. And the other times where I’ve made like massive mistakes have been like sometimes with these these stone carvings and they’re big. I’ll remove the background with a router. And so sometimes like the router bit was like too loose or something. And then when I’m taking out the background, it would like dig in way too much. So those are the kind of mistakes that I made. But the thing with carving is that if you’re careful, you can always fix your mistakes. It takes it takes work because you kind of have to carve the whole thing down around it. But it’s actually quite forgiving. So I really I really panic. As you can see, like when I get to the little details, when I get to the end, I’m not carving with a mallet anymore. I carve with the mallet at the beginning to do the basic forms and the levels. But then when I get to when I get to the finishing of the form, then I use a knife. So someone asks, can anyone make icons? And to be honest, I think that I think that anybody can, let’s say, approach iconography in terms of learning about it, about, you know, learning to to make to learning the process and even maybe learning to make icons. I don’t think that it’s necessarily restricted. But in order to if you want to make icons for the church, if you want to make icons that that you that will be used in the church and that will be used for that people will venerate, then I would I would really suggest that you have the permission of your of your bishop or at least of your priest or of your spiritual father. Just because it’s very important and and there are certain there are certain rules like there are there are just certain things you have to know and that you have to be careful about. And so it’s not it’s not a willy nilly thing. You can’t just go you can’t just do whatever you want. And so I mean, and sometimes I have very, let’s say, well-intentioned people who send me things that they want me to comment on. And and they look nice in the sense that they’re technically proficient, but they they’re lacking in the language. They’re lacking in the kind of the the unsaid language of what makes an icon an icon. And and that’s a difficult discussion right now in iconography, because obviously it’s all about patterns and understanding and interpreting what is essential and what is a detail in terms of what the what has been given to us by the by those before us. And so that’s a discussion that’s live in iconography right now, where some iconographers tend to want to copy directly like not just copy, but let’s say like even though the the drawing I did, the drawing I did for this for some iconographers, this would be this would be like a faux pas. I should trace a pattern that’s that that already exists and not draw my own, whereas others will go the totally opposite route, which is to be extremely flexible about what’s possible and what’s not possible and and to kind of want to have the their own personal style and all that stuff. So the discussion is quite is quite live right now in the world of iconography. So someone asked how much these little icons are these little icons are 300. But I'm not I don't like this is actually a commission for a while. What I was doing is I knew that because if you order like a bigger thing that has a lot of detail, then it ends up being expensive. And I knew that not everybody could afford it. And I also knew that a lot of people they don't they don't can't necessarily wait for a very long time. And so for a while I was making regularly making these little carvings and then putting them for sale on social media. But it's like once you once you realize that you've got two years waiting list, it's it's hard to justify making these carvings also. So right now what I'm doing for people who want kind of more inexpensive carvings for me, I encourage them to to be involved in the in the Patreon project because I'm what we do is we develop these these these ornamental carvings and these kind of semi figurative carvings with angels and different animals and stuff. And and then every work we're going to do, we've done it already once is that every once in a while, like a few times a year, we're going to just sell them. And those who are supporting the Patreon project will have have first dibs. Obviously, there are people giving at high level that will get an actual carving. So we save carvings for them. But then but then others will get like first dibs. And then after that, then I put it on social media and then people can can buy the other ones. So Jonathan, yes, Jonathan as a father as an artist, have you used sacred art and the spiritual development catechesis of your kids as they've grown? And so, I mean, obviously. I've always tried like let's say there was a feast or a Bible story when we were reading a Bible story or we were coming back from liturgy and it was a certain gospel reading or a certain feast or whatever. I'd always try to point out the icon with the kids and kind of ask them to look at it, to tell me what they see, to kind of try to analyze the elements in the icon. But my kids are not interesting in drawing icons, at least not yet. Maybe one day. Who knows? But, you know, in terms of them just being a dad, then I definitely have given my kids drawing classes. And and so we've done proportions and, you know, drawing from observation, different, different, different ways of teaching drawing. My 13 year old daughter is basically like obsessed with anime now, and that's all she she she cares to draw or to be involved with. It's kind of a little disturbing. But, you know, I can't I was when I was 13, I was like obsessed with Batman or whatever, or like comic books. So I can't totally can't totally blame her. So Deluxe says he has a Twitch channel where he streams fish tanks. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I'm not very good at the whole streaming thing. I'm really not good technically for carving for for for the YouTube stuff. So I should I probably could actually use some help in figuring out how to do this. I don't know, like what you guys think. How many people are watching like 382? That's actually not bad. So maybe it's something I could do more often. I don't know what you guys think. It's for me, obviously, if I'm carving, it's not a big deal. I can just and just have the camera running and then talk to you guys while I'm carving. You're less, less lonely. Right. I never feel lonely when I'm carving. Thomas from Storyteller says one more Batman video. I know I've made way too many Batman videos and I know that I made way too many Batman videos because the last one I did like not a lot of people watch it. I think they're like, what? Really? Or is it maybe they even think that. Wait, I saw this before. It's just another Batman video. But no, my Batman videos, everybody should watch them because because I deal with important issues. All right, so now we're moving in the face. So we're coming into interesting thing. So she's wearing she the mother God has two veils on. She has a veil on over her. Her head is what you see. And then underneath she has she has like someone said it's called a snood, which I don't like that word. So I don't know if that's really what it's called. If someone knows what it's called. It's like a veil. It's just a covering over the hair. So she has this one covering over her hair. And then on top, she has like a veil. So you never actually see Mary's hair. You never see the mother of God of God's hair in Orthodox icons. What you going to do this show first? Hey, my hot, my hot side was there. Amazing work. Thanks for the great content. Good to see you here. So my husband, I feel you probably you guys may have seen him on Twitter, on Instagram. He is he's known for his his Kanye West paintings. So he's actually given a painting to one of his paintings to Kanye and Kanye follows him on Twitter, which everybody is jealous about. So, yeah, it's good to see you. Someone asked, do Byzantine Catholics have different styles than Eastern Orthodox? And so that's a very complicated question because it's there's a historical situation which happened. And it didn't it did happen through Byzantine Catholics before it happened in in the Orthodox world, which is that in the 18th, 19th century, I would say, maybe starting a little bit before the the style of iconography became very Western in Greece and in Russia as well. So in this five countries and so there so the traditional let's say practice and style of iconography almost vanish. It was almost gone. And and interestingly enough, then it also led to a kind of breakdown of of icons themselves. And so kind of moving into secularism, the the the idea of the icon or the importance of the icon started to disappear as well. And so there were always some practices, people practicing the traditional style for the ancient style, but they were few. And and it's in the 20th century, actually, that that the style, the ancient style of icon painting was restored through people like Leonid Uspensky and Phocios Kontoglou in Greece, who kind of rediscovered the ancient style and then tried to help people understand it. You know, is one of those things sometimes I talk about how, you know, a few decades ago, people wouldn't even have understood what I was talking about. And I really do believe that because there was like a weird materialist blindness. And so I think that it's the same with with icons. I think that there came a strange blindness where people really did think that, you know, representing reality in a certain manner was was the only way that you could represent it or was the only possible reason why you would represent it. And they didn't have the capacity just because of a weird kind of philosophical, historical blindness to understand the value of more symbolic manners of representation. And and so in the 20th century, with actually the kind of post World War Two, beginning of the breakdown, I guess you could call it of modernism. That's when the possibility of seeing traditional icons again started to reappear. And so so there are really some pioneers and they made mistakes, I would say they made mistakes in their theory and they made mistakes in their in their practice. And they're actually being actually quite under attack right now in the world of iconography. And so there's a whole group of scholars and iconographers that are attacking the the pioneers of of of the modern icon movement. But but I think despite their mistakes, I think what they offered us was really invaluable in terms of a capacity to see that was lost. And so I definitely support. The traditional style. But it it led it did lead to some excesses. For example, like some people would say things like, you know, if an image is painted in a in a Western style or in like a kind of post Renaissance style, then it's not an icon. And I think that's really a dangerous route to go because, you know, I I would say you have to see it in terms of hierarchy rather than see it as an on off switch. And I think it's dangerous to to decide what what what really will be an icon in terms of. How it affects the world. So you can accept that, for example, like a really Western painted icon can can still be a center of veneration and can still be a place where people encounter, you know, a mystery. While while saying that you think that traditional icons are superior theologically and that they should that they should be promoted and be preferred, let's say, to the ancient style. I need to do. Need to put this in the middle. I think because I think because the image is not in the middle when I turn it keeps like it turns up and down. Better. Yeah, this is better. Sorry. This will be this will be easier to watch now because I didn't realize it because I hadn't put it in the middle of the board. It was like spinning up and down for you guys. So someone says, stopping homeschool to watch this. Come on. This is homeschool. This isn't stopping homeschool. This is the idea is because the nose is the. Is the highest point on the face, and I always free that up first. Makes to make sure that that's on the highest point in the carving as well. It can be equal to other points, but it definitely has to be one of the highest points. So. So Anders Ross, that says, what do you think about flow state? Any symbolic insight? I mean, I don't have a I don't have a problem with the idea of a flow state. I think one of the things I'm worried about when people talk about flow state is that is is that they somehow want to say that that's the mystical experience or that this kind of integrated moment that you have that that's the mystical experience. And I think that that's a little dangerous because. I think that maybe it's like a lot of things. It can be a kind of kindle your. Your interest or it can kindle your sense that there's something more that there's a possibility of having higher. States or higher experiences, but I don't think that when you read what the mystics go through, like that's that's that's not the way to go about it. Can't want toujah. not, that's not, it doesn't limit itself to that, that's for sure. Like they, the states that they reach are much higher and much, you know, so I think that it's great, you know, when you're, when you're praying or, you know, even carving. Sometimes I definitely do reach that kind of flow state when I'm carving. You can really start to see the face now, here. Someone says, JNSM7 says, I'm pretty sure you can enter into a flow state while you're killing people in the battlefield. It may be transcended but it might not necessarily be good for you. That's an awesome point, yeah. Yeah, actually I'm pretty sure that many warrior cultures saw killing people or just this, this state, like let's say the kind of, this transpersonal state that you could reach during battle to be like a mystical thing, that's for sure. Like the whole idea of the berserker and, you know, the idea that the berserker kind of loses himself and becomes a vehicle. Also one of the, like let's say one of the really important aspects of Christian or Orthodox spirituality is that you're not supposed to pay attention to the states. Like you're not supposed to pay, you're not supposed to attend to the spiritual states that you reach. You're actually supposed to be suspicious of them and to not, to not dwell on them. So it's not like you can't reach them. It's not that you don't, things won't happen to you and you won't reach these kind of ecstatic states but, but you should definitely, definitely shouldn't like search for them, search out for them and you definitely shouldn't attend to them. Because you're going higher, like you're reaching for, for the last, for the ultimate one which is theosis, which is illumination, seeing the, seeing the divine light. So someone asks, Charlie Longoria asks, what carving skill was the most difficult for you to master? Um, hmm. I would say it's always, clothing is always the hardest. Clothing is really, it's like having the right level of subtlety in clothing because it's not just about carving, it's about drawing and about understanding form and about, and so it's like you can always be a better, you can always be better at clothing when you're, you're an iconographer. I think for painting it's probably the same. And so I think that that's the, that's always my challenge is, is to try to, to keep, when I, sometimes I look at some of the carvings I did in the past and I'm like, wow, I really, man, that clothing is really nice and some reason I can't reach that anymore. Um, or the other elements, I feel like they're more available to me, like the face and, um, you know, let's say carving the hands or carving different other aspects. One of the things that I've actually recently learned or recently acquired, uh, in terms of carving, I would say it's been about a year, maybe a year and a half, is I used to sand all my carvings like a lot and so I would, I would carve, especially in stone, like I would carve the whole thing and then with like sand paper I would like go over every single edge to make it smooth and everything. And I remember it was Andrew Gould who's a, for those who don't know, he's a, he's a building designer who designs churches. He kept telling me, why do you send your carving so much? He said, just carve it, like don't send it. And at first I was, I didn't want to do that because you can also fix things with sanding, you know, when you feel a little uneasy, but most recently in the past, I would say about a year, a little, maybe a little more, I have actually stopped sanding most of the carving. And so all the clothing I leave and the hands, these different parts, and I'll sand maybe sometimes just the surface of the face, especially if it's a, if it's a woman to kind of make it smooth. But, but all the rest I leave, like the rocks in the background, the cities and everything, I don't sand, I just carve straight up and don't, don't touch it. And it looks better. And so it both looks better and saves time, which is, which, hey, you can't complain. You can't complain when something does that. So I'm actually right now, someone's talking about this soap stone that I'm carving from Kenya. It's called Kisi stone. And it's from the, it's from the Kisi area in Kenya, mostly from a town called Tabaka and around that town named Tabaka. And I, one of the reasons I discovered this stone is because I lived there for several months with my wife and kids when we were living in Kenya. And that's where I learned to carve this stone. And so I was taught to, to, to, to carve this. And then when I got back from Kenya, I really kind of threw myself into, into it. And I'm actually right now, I'm ordering a shipment of stones. So I'm just hoping there won't be like problems with COVID and whatever. But for now, it seems like it's, it's, it's going. So is it me or are there more people in the, in the live stream now than there are when we do the Q&A, which is surprising, interesting. It might be because it's during the day as well. I'm thinking maybe that's what it is. Or maybe I should just, should just, I just should do these instead of, instead of the Q&A's. Be less exhausting, man. Those Q&A's sometimes when I finish, I have like a mix of like exhaustion and exhilaration. And so I'm super tired after the Q&A's, but then I can't go to bed. I can't sleep because I have like a weird mental rush. Someone says do the Q&A while carving. That's a, I don't know if I could, I don't know if I could manage it because I mean, I don't think I could, I would probably make a mistake in the carving because some of the questions you guys asked me during the Q&A's are like, they're, they're tough questions. And sometimes the kind of question that I have to be careful when I answer not to, not to totally put my foot in my mouth. I'm gonna add more light here. No, that's way too much light for you guys. It's gonna get blended. No, it's better like this. Yeah. Sorry. I wanted to add more light, but it just washed away everything. Someone said it's actually amazing that you're doing this with single chisel. You know, it's like, I actually, I'm such, I'm not a tools guy. I really don't, I'm not a big tools guy. I'm not a very practical person, which, which might surprise people. You know, it's like, I can't, I'm not good at construction. I'm not good at, at, you know, renovation and all that kind of stuff guys do. I don't understand cars. And so because of that, I never, I just kind of do with what I have. And I, and I rarely do I spend a lot of time thinking of how I could do it in a better way, like how I could make it and say time or have a better tool or have the right tool. Or so I just kind of, if I can do it with every tool I have in my hand, then I'll just go ahead. And also like, I'm not systematic. And so sometimes I'll do the same thing with a different tool. And it's only after I'm done that I realized that I've done that. So Patrick Morrison asked where I get my references for my carvings. And so it's a mix of, of places. I think I talked about a little bit, a little earlier. I mostly base my work, like let's say the, there's these really high carvings that were done in the 10th, 11th century after iconoclasm. They're ivories. There's sometimes called the Romanos ivories. And so there's a whole tradition of, of ivories, which came about after iconoclasm. And I would say that those are really like for an icon carver, they're the place to look, because that's where the language got really developed. There are certain things earlier than that, but after iconoclasm is when really, you know, I would say everything we, we understand of icons really, really took shape. And so those are my go-to. Like those are the, those are my basic reference points. But then I also look at obviously later ivories, but also Western, Western medieval carving. And so let's say the cathedrals, the, the, the cathedrals in France, the late Romanesque, early Gothic cathedrals, and the late Romanesque, early Gothic ivories in terms of, in terms of style. And so that's mostly where I get my, my influence or where I look to, to how to interpret. So because, because icon painting in a way is a marginal art in the church, in the Orthodox church, then for sure it's, it's influence. I influence, my work is influenced by icon painting. So one of the things that I felt that had happened, is that icon painting had developed certain tropes that became pretty universal in terms of, in terms of iconography, not 100% universal, but I would say pretty universal. Say a way of doing the eyes, a way of doing the, the, the glance, the stare of the person and the icons. We kind of recognize the better icons as having certain, certain ways of doing eyes and, and hands and all this stuff. Whereas in carving it felt like it was all over the place and a lot of those better tropes didn't develop because it was marginal and because, you know, ivory carving basically almost stopped after the, after the, after the, after the, after the, you know, ivory carving basically almost stopped after Constantinople fell. And so I also tried to adapt some of the better aspects of icon painting to carving. So that's been one of my, one of my goals or one of my, how can I say this? Like one of the things that motivates what I'm doing is to take, is to take some of the better developments in icon painting and adapt them to carving. Because there's some things you can't do in a carving. So it's like, I'm not the only person who does that. I would say most icon carvers will use, will use paintings, icon paintings as some, as their models, but a lot of them don't think it through. And so one of the things that, like I said, those early ivories, they're like 11th, 10th, 11th century ivories, they give you like a basic map and then you can use those as a ground on which to build to then adapt it to new, to new ways of, based on the painting. So one of the things I feel like was never really well done in in Eastern, in Eastern iconographic tradition in terms of carving was I feel like the faces are always, are not great. Like they're kind of mediocre. And they were more successful in kind of Western medieval art, let's say like late Romanesque art, the way they did the eyes in a very kind of simple stylistic way. And and so I tend to, I tend, so what I did is I looked at those and then joined them with more Byzantine clothing and Byzantine proportions, I would say, and just iconology. So D-Loc says, I sent a message you, a DM on Twitter, unless there's a different way you would like to be contacted. I mean, I can check. I don't, like, I don't always see all the DMs because some of them are, some of them are, if you're not, if I don't follow you, then they kind of go into spam or whatever it's called or message request or whatever. So I don't always see them and I don't always answer. I'm sorry. I especially since the Jordan Peterson interview, I've been really overwhelmed by messages and it's very touching because a lot of people are writing me really wonderful messages, but I just can't, I just can't answer everybody. And also, like a lot of people are asking me to go on their podcasts and, and, and I understand, it's like, I, I sympathize, but it's hard because those take up a lot of time and, you know, and also because everybody has a podcast. Like I have a podcast, so it's not, I'm not complaining about that, but everybody has a podcast. So it's hard to, it's hard to, to, yeah, it's hard to answer those messages in the positive, let's say, but I can check your message and see what you say. So you can really see, I mean, I think you can really see the face kind of appearing pretty clearly. So, and so the next step is going to be the eyes. So you can see, I basically carved the eye socket first to give myself some shape. So it's, it's shaping the eye automatically. Then I can fiddle with it later, but so it says do icon NFTs. Why would I need to do icon NFTs if I have a physical object that I can just sell? Not sure how that would be like, how would that even work? So someone says, any advice for an aspiring iconographer? I have a chance to take some lessons under icon, an iconographer at St. Anthony's monastery. Should I seek a blessing? I mean, I would say it's always useful to have a blessing for what you're doing. Like I said, I don't think you actually need the like a permission of your priest to learn to paint icons if you're interested in it. It's probably a good idea to talk about it with your spiritual father. But for sure, if you're going to be making icons for the church, or making them, like, besides just practicing and learning, making them for veneration, then I would suggest that you be a little more deliberate about that and maybe in fact do, you know, ask a blessing of your priest or of your bishop. So my advice to you is to practice. That's the advice you could give an artist. I would say my advice to most iconographers is learn to draw, like really learn to draw because people get caught up in the technical part of icon painting and they get caught up in the idea because you can trace a pattern. And so because of that, a lot of iconographers don't learn to draw properly. And it's like, I don't care how good your pattern is. If you don't know how to draw, I can tell in your icon. And because there's an uneasiness about, I don't know how to explain it. It's like when you paint, when you know how to, and so I really suggest that people should learn to draw. And when I mean draw, I don't mean even just draw icons. I mean learn to draw, learn how to, and so nice learning all kinds of even learning to draw from nature, learning to learning proportions, learning to draw from like how to do illustrations, how to draw hands, how to draw feet, how to draw all of that is something which will be useful to you. And to be honest, like that is really what will always separate the real, like kind of more professional iconographer from the amateur is a capacity to draw. Another advice too is I would say if you're learning to paint icons, be careful. Like be careful because you'll often have people who don't let's say have a sensitivity to quality will if they hear that you're you're painting icons or right away say well can you paint an icon for me like can you paint can you paint an icon for a church because they want cheap like they don't like paying for art. And so I would say be very wary of that because just because you took one icon painting class or two or three doesn't mean that you you can paint the level of icons that should be in a church. And you know I think that kind of amateur spirit explains a lot of the bad icons that we find in churches being used and being being part of the being the actually part of the liturgy. It's because people kind of improvise themselves. Someone said 300 dollars too cheap. You know it's a tricky thing the icon the icon world because you you're making objects for people to use in their prayer life. And so yeah I'm not making icons I'm not making images just for consumption or fan art or you know whatever or for a gallery. And so I have to be I have to be like attentive to that and be careful about that. And you know it's weird because I always kind of said that I try to make my it's like I can make I've made icons that are ten thousand dollars like that take forever and take months. And like I'm willing to to charge for really expensive time consuming and and and difficult icons. But I think it's important that these little icons have a have a kind of reasonable price because because yeah because it's you know everybody needs icons to pray with. So that's like I'm at I'm as touched to know that someone you know someone who has a you know as a little job and or two jobs and is you know struggling in life will then nonetheless I put a little bit of money aside to be able to buy a real icon instead of getting a print and have that kind of just be part of their life. To me that's really touching. So I want to try to keep something accessible for for anybody. And you know in the end in the end God has blessed me like in so many ways like you know. So I have nothing to like I'm I'm fine you know like I'm totally fine. So someone asked if I use gold leaf. I do but not always. So if if if a client wants gold leaf I can use it but I don't it's not systematic. So if if it's it's like an extra step and it's a it's a pretty for stone it's a time it's a time consuming step. It'll take it'll take me like a few hours to put on the or at least an hour an hour and something to to add the to add the gold. If you go to my website you'll see you'll see examples with gold in them. All right so as you can see it's I mean it's coming along pretty nicely. It's almost it's almost not almost done but at least the the the basic work is almost done. There's always some fiddling to do in the end to make it really nice but it would take a little bit of time. I mean there's a lot of work to do in the end to make it really nice but I would say you can enough that you can really see the the face. Okay She probably heard me speak French to my wife there there because my workshop is like right behind my right behind my my house and it's my son's birthday today 16 16 and so my wife was like because we we actually celebrated his birthday during the weekend but she's like we should still do something you know a little something special for him and I agree. I have to figure that out. It's been really tough for the kids on with Covid. It's turning 16 and you know it's really hard to see your friends and everybody's nervous and it's actually technically like the kids aren't allowed nobody's allowed to go in anybody's house here so it's just been very frustrating. Okay Now let's do the nose. Sorry for that sound it's gets it makes a really weird sound. But So someone asks, Max Hydery asks, think for other content, which version of the Bible should I read? Does it matter? I personally prefer the King James. Yeah, I'm a big fan of the King James myself because I grew up with it and, you know, I'm just used to the formulation. And so I don't really, I would say it's best to avoid those Bibles that are too technical in the sense of, that have all the footnotes and all that stuff in terms of scholarly opinion about texts. I really dislike those Bibles. And so I would say King James is fine to me. A lot of people would say that at least for the Old Testament you should read the 70, except with Gent, but you know, you can get the Orthodox Study Bible, which is good. We're kind of, we're kind of, we're ruined in a way now because, you know, when I'm reading, let's say I'm reading scripture in terms of studying scripture, then I always read like different versions of the same verse and then, you know, go on Bible Hub and then check out the interlinear version. And so it's, we're pretty, we're actually pretty lucky to be able to do that. And so we're less in danger of giving into kind of propaganda that can be in translations. If you listen to the Lord of Spirits podcast, like you'll hear Father Stephen complain all the time about how most Bible translations have like an agenda. And in the sense they've had the agenda of evacuating scripture of all the weird stuff, all the stuff that was problematic for people. Kind of cleaning up scripture, making it look decent. But that's not necessarily a good thing because a lot of the mysteries are in the weird stuff. You know, a lot of the pearls are hidden in there. So someone says, do they recommend the drawing course by Julia Hayes? Yes, definitely. Julia has a Patreon project, which I think it's like a monthly. You pay like 5 a month or $10 a month or however time you want to do it. And she gives all these drawing classes and she does like daily exercises and she’s really good. Like she really knows how to draw. She learned to draw from George Cordes, who is probably one of the best draft people, like one of the best draftsmen in terms of icons today. And so she’s quite good. She can really teach people the kind of logic, the inner logic of icons. I’m going to destroy your ears with that. Sorry. All right. Someone says, it’s a layers the violent vacuum into the face. It’s not violent. You have to understand it as purifying and purifying the surface. All right. All right. Alright, and do the nostril. Alright, and do the nostril. Alright. So in the face I tend to do the pupils or the irises towards the end, the inside of the eye. At least the end of the face. So I don’t know if someone asked this already, but what are your thoughts on that NFT that sells 69 million dollars? I have not seen, I haven’t followed that at all, so I don’t know. I don’t even know what is it, what is the NFT of? Is it an image? Is it a song? I mean, it’s like, I guess people are just wanting to be, to be like right, just right in there. They want to be in the new thing. They want to be in the new thing. They see it as the future. Alright, so now the eyes are the trickiest thing. So someone asked if I’m the first person to venerate all my icons. It’s a tricky thing, the whole venerating your own icons. I have an icon that I carved towards the beginning of my carving practice from the early days and I kept it. And I use it sometimes, like I use it for doing prayer, like we’ll put it up while we’re doing morning prayers and stuff. But it’s always a little awkward because it’s hard to look at your own work and not be looking at it technically. And so it’s a tricky thing for me to venerate my own icons. I’m not saying it is impossible, but it just, I don’t know. This is the only part where I’m going to redraw because the eyes are… Yeah, that’s pretty good. The wakeful asked, do you think the newness of Canada makes your conversion to orthodoxy more possible? In Europe it feels like the weight of history makes it difficult. It’s possible. Maybe the spirit of North America, there’s a reason why in North America is where a lot of the first translating into English happened or translating into other languages. But there are other places where, like for example in Russia there was a moment where there were a nice amount of converts in France, Paris for example. So it just depends where you are. The thing is that if you’re in a place where the ethnic group that brought orthodoxy has only been there for a short time, a very short time, then you’re going to have a problem. You’re going to have the problem of a kind of ethnicism and you’ll have the problem of not having the liturgies in English, in your language, and them also not understanding why you would want to become orthodox in the first place. Because in America the Russian emigres ended up having a more evangelical spirit, you could say. And in the generations which came after the first waves of Russian emigres, after the revolution, there’s enough time for them to assimilate to French and English culture to kind of develop, to want to translate and to develop a version of orthodoxy which could be understood by Westerners. So all right, so we have the iris. I’m actually going to use an exacto knife for this. Let me get into the little details. My face in front of the camera. I don’t like to talk while I’m doing the pupils because that’s for sure a place where I don’t want to mess up. I also have these smaller tools. I use for doing detail stuff. I also have a whole set of tools that I use for actual miniatures. So then there’s some fixing to do. Eyelid is too low actually. You know when an eyelid is too low and the character, the person looks sleepy. So you want to avoid that sleepy look. So Mike says, since you’re backlogged with orders, what other iconographers would you recommend to look at? Depends. Would you mean by carving or do you mean just icon painting? Carving. There are a few out there. There’s one of my students, Ron Slokett. You can look him up. He’s on social media. He’s been getting better. He’s been doing pretty well. There’s someone who kind of taught me some carving. His name is George Belak. I don’t know if he still carves though. There’s a Greek iconographer who’s amazing doing ivory and bone carving. His name is Michael Lukas. You can order stuff from him from Greece. He’ll make it for you. There’s also someone, oh man, his name escapes me right now. He’s going to hate me for not remembering his name. One of Aidan Hart’s students is really good. If you go on my Facebook feed and you scroll down, you’ll find I posted an image of his visit of the Magi to the Mother of God after she gave birth. And his carvings are really, really good. Aidan Hart is a really good carver, but I’m sure he’s probably as busy as I am. He was carving before I was, long before I was. There are a few other people who kind of caught me off guard. And I don’t remember people’s names and I feel bad because they’ll think it’s because I don’t like them, but it’s not the case. So Michael Boomer asked, do you have somebody apprenticing with you? Actually, no, I just have my assistant. It’s hard to have someone apprenticing with you with COVID and everything, especially now. I couldn’t have them stay here or anything, so it’s just not practical. My assistant has his own workshop and I’ll visit him or he’ll come here when we need to see each other and to trade off carvings or to talk about the next project. In a simpler world, I’d be happy to have people. So, Scott and this is Hey Jonathan, I have the four evangelists from you, from your last carving sales, our family loves them. It’s really cool to see your process in action. That’s awesome. You got the four. Yeah, that’s amazing. I’m happy you have them. It’s nice to know that they’re all in the same place too. That’s pretty cool. All right, so you’re starting to really, I mean, the face is pretty much done. All I need to do to make the ears. And the ears, I just have a very simple shape. I don’t make the ears elaborate at all. Actually, just to suggest. All right. So, let’s get this. You need to make sure that all my, that all these lines are gone. So, suggest this fold here, just so it’s not too boring. Same here, suggest these folds. Okay. All right. And so, I also need to create the band because she has a band around her veil. Okay. So, it says don’t breathe in the dust. Yeah, that’s my sin. When I get into little details, I really struggle because I blow on the dust to make it go away. Yeah, that’s definitely something that I’m not good at. So, she wanted to take just a little bit of dust and I just kind of blow on it. It’s horrible. It’s like the worst thing ever. It’s like gypsum silica dust. So, I’m just, one of the important things, one of the things that makes a carving look very subtle is like you don’t have just lines. You have changes of level. And so, I carved the line to make the band appear. I’m not just leaving it as a line. I’m actually making sure that the band is on top of the clothing. All right. So, just need to put in some subtle eyebrows. Eyebrows are a big question because if you look at ancient carving, like even a lot of ancient ivory carvings, they don’t have eyebrows. And so, once Aidan Hart, who I respect and admire, like he’s an amazing artist, iconographer wrote me and said, you shouldn’t carve eyebrows. You should just leave it because ancient carvings don’t have eyebrows. And I thought about it and I decided that I’m going to continue to carve eyebrows because the reason I think that ancient carvings didn’t have eyebrows is because they were painted. Even the carved icons were most often painted in color. And so, then they would have put the eyebrows in color. But because mine aren’t, then I decided to put eyebrows. Someone said, didn’t know the Mona Lisa was an icon because she doesn’t have eyebrows. That’s funny. So, one of the things is that when I cut with a knife, let’s say, I need to go back because it gets kind of crunchy on the edges that I carved for the first time. I don’t know what other word to use. All right, I’ll expand here. So, someone asked if I prayed before carving. Yes, I pray. I have morning prayers. I don’t necessarily have like, so some iconographers, they have something. It’s a late thing, but it’s fine. There’s something called the iconographer’s prayer. And so, you can find it online if you’re interested. And then some people, you know, when they actually go into the workshop, then they’ll pray that particular prayer. All right. And so, now last step, actually, pretty much is going to be the star. So, the star is a… And so, Eurodivie asked, are there any particular iconographers Saint you have an affinity towards? I mean, I think for sure Saint André. I mean, it’s hard not to. He’s so, like, his icons are so amazing and so mystical. So, for sure, Saint André Rublev. I mean, Saint Theodore the Studite is important just because he was really, I mean, I don’t know if he’s an iconographer. He’s not really an iconographer. He’s more like a defender of icons. I learned, I guess I didn’t know, but I’ve heard that Saint Paisios of the Holy Mountain, who died in the 90s, was carving icons. And so, it’s pretty awesome. I’d love to see his icons. All right. So, this is going to be carved almost like a chip carving. I don’t know if you guys know what chip carving is, but I carve one side on like this, then I’m going to carve the other side. The camera was about to fall there. Sorry, guys. Sorry for the shakiness here. Once I’ve carved one side, then I carve the other. So, Michael Bomer says, seeing the Theotokos gradually appear has been quite moving for me. Thank you for doing this live today. Well, you know, it’s my pleasure. I’m really happy to be able to do this. I’m always kind of looking for ways to show that I really appreciate the opportunity all you guys are giving me to talk about symbolism, to have a kind of public voice, and it’s all because of you guys. And I really appreciate it. So, we’ll see. If people like this, then I’ll be happy to do it again, if people appreciate this. Not too much, because I get the sense that streaming, like people who stream every day, like God bless them and everything, but I always feel like it’s probably dangerous to stream every day just because you’re definitely going to end up saying something stupid that you’ll regret if you just leave the camera on in Babylon for hours and hours. You know, it’s like asking for trouble. So, I’m going to put this on her veil. She has these bands on her inner veil. So, it says I hope he doesn’t delete. I will not. I won’t delete it. I’ll leave up this. I’ll leave this video up. It’ll be part of our part of the hundred thousand celebration. So, it says Orthodox Bob Ross. Man, okay, all of a sudden I was going to like start imitating him. Which has been highly inappropriate. All right, so it’s basically there. Then what I’m going to do is I’m definitely going to go back and fiddle and fix a few things. So, it’s always a good idea to usually to leave some time because you end up not seeing certain things if you spend too much time on one carving. At least that’s my experience. Okay. Well, that’s pretty much it. The last thing that I could do is I would put the inscription and then I would sand a few parts like the parts that are messy. For example, if you look at the the halo, it still has some marks in there. So, that’s kind of easy to take off with some sand paper and these pencil marks and stuff. Little things like that. But it’s pretty much done. And so, I think I’m going to stop the stream now. So, yeah, thanks guys for tuning in. It was a lot of fun. I liked it. And so, maybe I’ll do it again at some point. Let’s think about it. And so, thanks again. Like I said, thanks for the attention. Thanks for the support everybody. I really appreciate it. And so, see you guys very soon. Bye bye. So, I don’t even know how to stop this. There you go.