“Thangka Painting” – This Week’s Intensive
I finally got back into my daily restorative yoga practice this week, and my body is so grateful! The trick, of course, is to do it before I turn on the computer in the morning. This is much easier to do now that I’ve completed my “Inspirational Quotes for the Creative Soul” project – quotes on 180 of my paintings/photographs delivered once a day on my Facebook Page until July 15th. I’ve started other tax, writing, and art-business training projects though, so I’ll have to keep reminding myself to start my days with yoga – I can feel the difference all day long.
This week’s workshop was a natural follow-up to last week’s. We studied how to make Thangka paintings, an ancient Tibetan Buddhist style of art used as a teaching, devotional, or meditation tool. Our teacher, Timea Tallian, spent 6 months in the Himalayan country of Bhutan working with Thangka masters there, adding to her wealth of artistic, technical, and spiritual knowledge. I always learn so much from her. When we came in on Monday, we were greeted with our biggest altar yet – which included various books, sacred objects, inspirational tools, and loads of art supplies she had picked up the week before in London’s Chinatown. We started our week with a few breathing exercises and chanting to Tara, the “mother of liberation”, who represents. amongst other things, the virtues of success in work and achievements, enlightened activity, and compassion.
Thangka painting isn’t about creativity or imagination – it’s a craftsmanship that requires years of training. Young Buddhist monks train for 10 years in order to be able to copy all of the symbols by heart, make their own paints, learn each figure’s dimensions and sacred geometry, etc.
Day 1: Line Drawings
Unlike these monks, we only had a week. Therefore, on Day 1, we used the photocopier and various copying techniques to create our own thangka drawing. One technique is to apply powered pigment on the back of our chosen symbols with a small burlap pouch and then trace on top to leave the pigment on our papers and then affix the design with pencil.
Another is to pounce holes along the design and then tap the pigment pouch on top, which leaves a dotted design that we can then draw in with a pencil. This is great if you’re using the same design several times.
We all got to choose symbols that appealed to us to decorate around our double dorje. Some of us went simple and others got very intricate. Once we were done, we used special Chinese paint brushes to practice ink line drawing – not as easy as it looks. I had heard an artist talking about turning the paintbrush in her hand while painting – when I asked Timea if she did this, she realized she had been doing it unconsciously all these years. I’m both needing and appreciating the practice in fine line work with a paintbrush. I ended up buying one of Timea’s curved chipmunk hair brushes from India as they’re great for curves and spirals.
Day 2 – Shading & Paint Making
On Tuesday, after a bit of Kundalini Yoga, thanks to Martin, we continued working with ink and then shading – either with ink or pencils. I used a simple black drawing pencil to do mine. What I like about the Thangka style of shading is that it’s a whole lot easier than the western style, where it has to replicate what we see in real life – light direction, cast shadows, reflected light etc. In this style, all you have to do is make sure that light is against dark and dark is against light. The light is usually on the outside. That’s it. That’s good!
In the afternoon, Timea gave a lecture on traditional pigments and paint-making before we got into it ourselves. Although we did use animal glue and powdered pigments, we also used gouache colours from the tube to mix into them. As I said, we don’t have 10 years, only a week, so no sitting for hours grinding malachite into a fine powder…
Day 3: Painting
I truly appreciated our opening circle on Wednesday. We chanted and OMed, but we also participated in a sacred ritual that resonated deeply within me. I often start my painting sessions by smudging the studio and blessing all of my supplies, praying, etc. On this day, we did that as a group. While chanting, we passed each of the containers of paint that we had mixed the day before around the circle. We each stirred each one, focusing on an intent/ prayer for each. We had a lot of colours, so I had the opportunity to pray for loved ones experiencing challenges, for all of humanity, animals, Mother Earth, living with purpose and passion, unconditional love for all, etc. Those were only my consecrations – can you imagine how beautifully infused those colours were by the end – not to mention well mixed? Wow!
As you may have read in my last post, I had a challenging day on Wednesday – I’m sure our morning circle helped – in many ways.
For the rest of the day, we painted. This was our last practice exercise before starting our individual projects. Our task was to use our gouache paints on top of an acrylic ground that had been applied on a photocopied image – the same for everyone. Timea demonstrated and we spent hours painting with these creamy colours that felt very much like my beloved Golden Fluid acrylics.
Once we were done, Timea showed us how rubbing the back of the image with a crystal pressed the pigment in and smoothed out the image. For smaller parts, we could do the front without fear of all our flaws being revealed.
Although we all worked with the same image and colours, the results were all quite different – beautiful work everyone!
Day 4: Personal Projects
On Thursday before Ernst Fuch’s birthday, Friday & Saturday, we worked on personal projects inspired by what we learned this week.
I was inspired by a painting I saw in a calendar and went out to buy myself a canvas to play on, starting with the way I’ve been painting for years – on the floor, with lots of water and fluid paints. What fun! After spending a few hours fanning it and working on my design of a tree of life and of a Buddha based on a photo of a sculpture, I glazed the whole thing in yellow. On Saturday, after a 4.5 hour hiking excursion (photos in next post tomorrow), I went into school for 7.5 more hours of work on this project. I wanted to bring back some of the original colours and so I added more water & colours – they looked great wet, but my experiment using zinc white (which is transparent) vs. titanium white (which is opaque) led to all the colours drying too dark. I got a lot of great coaching by Timea today, as well as by Martin (a classmate). I added a bit of a foreground by darkening the front with a purple glaze and will work on lightening the edge so that it’s light against dark and dark against light. I did some of that too around the tree and birds inside the circle. I’m learning so much and still have more to learn. I look forward to Monday/Tuesday when I can work on it some more.
Oh – on Saturday, Timea demonstrated airbrushing – I could have fun with this!
Celebrations:
At the end of the day on Friday, Laurence surprised Florence with a bouquet of flowers and their son Clovis gallantly presented a single rose to everyone in the class. Laurence gave his to Edgar 🙂 While he was out, Florence left class to pick up a delicious chocolate cake for Laurence’s birthday and we enjoyed that with a glass of champagne (or orange juice in my case). Nice!
What a great week! We’ll be spending Monday & Tuesday working on several projects from the two Intensives, and so there will be more fun & photos to follow.
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