Man working on a thangka painting

For many traditional Tibetan artists, painting a deity is an act of worship. Most often religious in nature, thangkas are a form of visual scripture. They depict buddhas, bodhisattvas (enlightened beings), and teachers, and illustrate their sacred stories and as well as the principles they embody. As both objects of worship and expressions of religious ideals, thangkas are a central feature in monastic shrines as well as in domestic altars.

Traditionally, painters wash their hands and light incense to purify themselves and their environment before starting to paint. The painting process follows a set sequence: first, they stretch white cotton or linen on a frame and apply gesso or chalk. Then they smooth out the surface and burnish it with a stone. The image begins with an outline either in black or red ink, then the painted background, and finally the central figure—first the body, then the facial features. Then the painting is gilded, or embellished with gold leaf. Upon completion, the artist mounts the painting on silk. Older thangkas were mounted on simple, dark blue silk or cotton, but now they often use printed silk brocades or polyester.

Painting Buddhist deities requires following the age-old tradition of iconometry, a system of bodily proportions and measurements used in creating the specific outlines of each deity. Beginning painters use a grid called a tik-khang, meaning “house of lines.” These measurements guide the painter in how to render the figure, the body postures known in Sanskrit as asanas, and their hand gestures, called mudras. Apprentices spend years learning the iconometrics as well as the stories and characteristics of various deities and human figures. As painters gain skill, they internalize the grid. While the iconometrics of the figures are fixed, painters have some creative liberty in rendering the background: the narrative stories, the decorative elements, and the landscape.

Artists traditionally collaborate in atelier-style workshops. Few thangkas are completely hand-painted by one artist. A master painter often oversees many paintings. His students paint the bigger swaths of color or the more decorative elements, while the master will step in to do the finer brushwork or the intricate details on the face or hands.

At the other end of the production spectrum, companies mass-produce thangkas in factories by printing images on canvas with acrylic paint. Right now, most thangka production in Western China falls in the middle of the spectrum, where artisans hand-paint some parts of the thangka, and machine-print the rest to speed up the process. Although LaserJet printing marks a departure from the traditional process, semi-mechanized production is a means to meet an increasing demand for painted works for non-religious use.

ID: ETAC_2016_06-15_DD_0071