For supports she uses wooden panels made out of basswood, mahogany, poplar or hight quality plywood. Further, she covers panels with a layer of batiste or canvas and several layers of gesso made from rabbit skin glue and powdered marble. Thus prepared ground is both tough and absorbent and allows egg tempera paint to adhere strongly and provides good, firm surface for so-called water gilding.
After transferring drawing to the panel, she covers halos and the background with several layers of bole (burnishing clay) with glue to prepare them for receiving gold leaf. After gilding. gold is burnished using agate burnisher or, for a varied effect can be finished with so-called water matte method.
As the egg yolk is very perishable, egg tempera paint cannot be purchased ready made, but has to be made by the artist. Dry, powdered pigments are ground with water and then mixed with egg yolk on daily basis. Mankowska uses pigments which meet high standards of permanency (sufficient even for fresco painting). Her palette is built around the various natural earths, which are not only beautiful, but also exceptionally stable, with real vermilion and a few other manufactured pigments added for contrast and liveliness of color. Particles of pigment, when enclosed in egg medium, retain their brilliance and freshness of color for centuries and the translucent character of tempera allows to exploit their optical properties to the fullest extend.
As a final finish for her icons Mankowska uses linseed oil based varnish (so-called olipha), made with fossil resins: either amber or copal. Such varnish is difficult to make and to apply, but for icons, which are, first of all liturgical objects, such varnish is the most appropriate. It is made by exposing linseed oil to the action of sunlight and oxygen from the air for several months, then boiling it adding dissolved resin and a little bit of cobalt drier. Later the mixture is thinned with turpentine and poured while still hot over warmed icon. It is left, protected from dust, for several hours to allow the oil to penetrate the paint and to thicken through exposure to air. Then excess of oil is removed from the surface. The icon has to be left in horizontal position and protected from dust for about a week to dry. Oil varnish imparts a delicate sheen to the surface, makes the paint inedible for insects or rodents and protects it from oil or salt from hands, and is not brittle.
While some other works of art require some special conditions for their preservation (most typically protection from light), paintings in egg tempera on wood, finished with linseed oil based varnish are best preserved under the same, moderate conditions of light, humidity, temperature and cleanliness of air that are optimal for human habitation.