Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Thangka Painting in Lhasa



A thangka is a painting used in Buddhism showing the Buddha, Buddhist scenes, a deity, a boddhisattva, or a mandala, or the wheel of life. As I already pointed out in the blogpost on the big thangka at Sera monastery, there are quite a lot of different spellings being used like: tangka, thanka, or tanka, but the best way is to spell it thangka as the t is aspirated, but it’s a T and not a TH.
The thangka has been used to teach or for devotional purposes, but today it might also serve as a souvenir. As for souvenirs there are also printed thangka
In the workshop I could see the paint being grounded und mixed with water to have a certain texture. They paint on paper, but also on other material. The scenes, the deities are drafted with pencil and then the picture is done in colors. Later it is mounted as shown in the pictures.


Color pigments


Grinding and watering the colors
 

Colors used to paint thangkas



Outlining before coloring


 
 Two thangkas, mounted


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