Page 73 - Tibetan Thangka Painting Methodsand Mat, Jackson

Five
Iconometric Practice and Further

Techniques of Sketching

The six main proportional classes, and especially the first provided additional guidance in the figure sketching to
four - Buddhas, peaceful bodhisattvas, goddesses, and come.
tall, wrathful beings - were standard fare for every When the student had completed the grid he next
Tibetan student painter. When learning to draw these drew the main outlines of the naked figure. He worked
proportions a student often began with the first class, with an example by his teacher before him, constantly
that of the Buddhas, and then slowly descended the referring back to it to check the accuracy of his copy.
iconometric scale. As a preliminary, some neophytes Finally, after the completion of the figure in an
were made to draw such things as the sacred symbols, unclothed state, he drew in whatever robes and
and also heads, hands and feet, separately. These gave ornaments were required.
them a basic familiarity with parts that later contributed When he had reached a high level of competence
to making up the whole. the artist could dispense with the full rectangular grid
When the student attempted to draw a complete and work instead from a simpler skeleton of reference
figure for the first time, he had to begin by establishing lines. This technique of using abbreviated measurement
a grid of correctly spaced lines within which he could lines was called sdom tshad (as opposed to the above
construct the figure itself. He might already have learned thig khang grid of lines, sometimes also called thig chen).
this general procedure through drawing the sacred While it guaranteed a properly proportioned figure, the
symbols or the head of a Buddha within a grid of guide- abbreviated method also helped the painter avoid
lines. As always, the vertical axis was the starting point needless tedium. Similarly, the advanced painter could
and main reference. But here the horizontal axis was also quickly sketch the clothing of a figure, and did not need
important, for the horizontal lines of the grid had to be to waste time on a detailed preliminary sketch of the
drawn parallel to it. Within the rectangular grid there complete unclothed figure.
were also a number of diagonal reference lines that

Sketches of hands by Wangdrak.

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