Page 79 - Tibetan Thangka Painting Methodsand Mat, Jackson

Six
Pigments

The application of colour to the thangka canvas involved each of these pigments, following the order of their
two main steps: first, filling in the areas of different base usual application in a full-colour thangka.
colours, and second, the subsequent shading and
outlining of those areas. To these steps there correspon-
ded the two essentially different types of paint in the Mineral Colours
Tibetan palette, (1) mineral pigments (rdo tshon and
sa tshon) and (2) the organic dyes or lakes (tshos). The first two colours used by Tibetan artists in an
The mineral pigments had to be mixed with a ordinary full-palette thangka were the mineral blues and
binder before being applied as paints. The chief binder greens. The choice of these pigments as the first to be
for these pigments was size or hide glue, the same applied, and the fact that they were initially used to
gelatinous solution that was used in preparing the paint the sky and landscape, were determined by
"gesso" for the ground. Paints prepared in this way principles of efficiency in painting technique, and not by
were used for the initial coat of colours. For the sub- religious or other considerations.
sequent shading and outlining, however, the artists for
the most part used dyes and lakes. These needed little Azurite Blue (mthing; mdo mthing)
or no binder to unite them with the underlying layers
of paint, and they could modify the hues and sharpen
the borders of the painted areas without adding
appreciably to the thickness of the paint layer.

The Classification of Thangkas by Colour

The use of colour could vary tremendously from one
thangka to another. The number and types of colours
used were in fact one set of criteria by which Tibetans The pigment used for sky, water and other blue areas
1
traditionally classified thangkas. Painted thangkas can was azurite, the blue basic carbonate of copper,
be divided in the first place according to whether all 2CuC0 .Cu(OH}z. Azurite occurs in nature as beautiful
3
colours were used or whether just one colour prevailed. monoclinic crystals as well as in massive and earthy
Most thangkas fell into the first group, the "full-colour" forms. The main source of this mineral in Tibet was
paintings in which the full palette was employed. The Snye-mo-thang in Gtsang, north of the Gtsang-po near
second group consisted of paintings in which one colour the border of Dbus. 3 Because of its importance in
predominated and a few other colours were used in painting, the lhasa government strictly controlled the
restricted roles. Paintings that employed limited palettes mining and primary distribution of the pigment, so that
could be further divided into three main sub-classes artists usually got it directly or indirectly from a govern-
according to the predominating colour: black thangkas ment office.
(nag thang or thang nag), gold thangkas (gser thang) and Besides being mentioned in some Tibetan sources
vermilion thangkas (mtshal thang).2 The black thangkas on painting materials, azurite is discussed in Tibetan
were more common, being used especially for depicting pharrnacopeias, for it was used as a medicine in the
fierce deities, whereas the gold and vermilion paintings Tibetan Ayurvedic system of medical practice. For
were much rarer, and nowadays one almost never sees instance, 'Jam-dpal-rdo-rje (fl. early 19th century?), the
these types being painted. author of a Tibeto-Mongolian materia medica, classified
, The palette used by Tibetan artists when painting azurite as one of the non-melting mineral medicines
full-colour th~ngkas was quite rich. It included pigments (mi bzhu ba'i rdo sman). 4 This author also quoted
that in an unmixed state yielded all of the primary and another well-known work, the Shel 'phreng of Dil-dmar
secondary colours except purple. Also included were dge-bshes, to the effect that azurite occurs with
black and white. In the following pages we will describe malachite in the same deposits of copper ore. 5

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