Page 77 - Tibetan Thangka Painting Methodsand Mat, Jackson

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Pounces of lotuses.

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Long stencil of repeating lotus petals.
commonly placed clusters or linear series of idealized stenciling was the lotus petal. Such a stencil could create
clouds, evenly balanced to both right and left. Such a a running border of lotuses on a beam, an altar, or
design could easily be imparted to the painting surface wherever the artist desired. During the actual pouncing
by a stencil. The artist drew the cloud formation on a the larger stencils had to be held in place by an assistant
piece of paper and perforated it. The design could then while the artist dusted them with the powder bag.
be pounced on one side of the sky and then turned over After applying the stencil to several places he would
and pounced on the corresponding spot on the other return to redraw the designs with brush and ink while
side of the sky. Similarly the clouds of one side could be they were still fresh and clearly visible.
sketched directly on the canvas, and then traced onto
paper for making the stencil. Pouncing in this way Tracing
enabled the painter to produce exact mirror images, and
the technique had a wide application in all types of Since the prepared canvas was quite translucent, an
painting. original design could be attached to the back and held
As great time savers and as a convenient means up to a window for tracing. As with pouncing it was
for reproducing design elements, the artists also found essential for the painter to align the original correctly
stencils particularly useful in the painting of walls, with reference to the vertical axis of the painting.
furniture, and architectural features such as pillars and Originals for tracing were sometimes made from finished
capitals. When painting large areas, the artist added yet paintings by laying thin, nearly transparent paper over
another variation of stenciling which entailed the making them and carefully tracing the main composition.
of a long stencil in which the same design alternated or
repeated a number of times. First he folded a long strip Notes
of paper back and forth at regular intervals eight or nine
times, creating a fan-like or accordion-like stack of 1. On the composition of this ink see below,
Chapter 6.
connected pages. Next he drew on the top page of the
stack one unit of the design to be repeated, taking care
2. The use of graphite pencils can lead to new
to center it exactly. After that he punctured the lines of
problems. The painter has to be particularly careful
the design with a needle so that each page was pierced.
to erase any mistakes or extraneous lines, for these
This done, he unfolded the paper to reveal a stencil will otherwise remain visible under light-coloured
that repeated or alternated the same design element paints. Here the impermanence of the lines and
eight or nine times. sketches made by the traditional means is a recom-
One motif especially well suited to this last type of mendation.

THE TRANSFER OF DESIGNS 73