Page 26 - Tibetan Thangka Painting Methodsand Mat, Jackson

Tshedor polishing the canvas with a smooth stone after moistening it.

damp burnishing left it a bit more textured. This was Characteristics of a Good Thangka Canvas
desirable since the painting side of the canvas needed
more "tooth" for it to accept paint readily. But some The cloth supports and gesso grounds used by living
painters, such as Wangdrak, did not dry polish at all painters from the various schools and regions differ
during this stage. slightly in their appearance and constitution. The
painter Wangdrak, for instance, described the ideal
Different Techniques for Preparing the Support and thangka canvas as resembling soft deerskin, and his
Ground canvases were quite soft and pliant by Central Tibetan
standards. By comparison, the canvases used by some
Painters from different regions and different artistic other informants from Dbus and Gtsang were somewhat
traditions sometimes departed from the above general- heavier and less flexible, while those of some Eastern
ized method. One finds, for example, a record of a Tibetan artists were often even softer and finer than
painter from Ladakh who when stretching his cotton Wangdrak's.13 Still, certain characteristics were valued
cloth sewed dried barley stalks to the edges of the cloth by all Tibetan artists. The gesso ground had to be
to serve as his inner frame. i 1 Another Ladakhi artist, strongly fixed to the underlying cloth, and not so
Wangchuk, a present-day painter who was trained by a thick or brittle that it cracked when rolled and unrolled.
master from Gtsang, used to apply alternating damp and It had to be smooth, so as not to impede in any way the
dry burnishings to both sides of the cloth until he had detailed sketching and painting that were executed upon
achieved the desired surface quality. And there are many it, but not so smooth that it lost its porosity. It also had
other variant methods, far too many for us to list them to be free from excessive gille in the ground, so that the
all. But in spite of these differences it is clear that the paints readily and permanently attached themselves to
basic methods for preparing the cloth support in thangka it. If the major defects could be avoided and the main
painting are very old and have been passed down from necessities achieved, the painter was free to follow
teacher to student over many generations. A description whatever minor variations in technique suited him or
of a very similar method survives, for instance, in the his tradition.
writings of the 15th-century master Bo-dong PaIl-chen
Phyogs-las-rnam-rgyal. 12

22 THE PREPARATION OF THE PAINTED SURFACE