Page 140 - Tibetan Thangka Painting Methodsand Mat, Jackson

He also painted triangular clumps of bushes using the Linear Details Utilizing a Combination
same method. These he placed at even intervals in the of Colours
middle of green hills, spacing them in the same way that
large brocade motifs were placed in a field of cloth. Although not really considered to be types of outlining
He normally painted such triangular clumps larger in (bead), several other finishing methods existed that
the areas of the distant hilltops, and made them smaller entailed the application of colours in lines or thin strips.
as he worked down the hill toward the foreground. The areas so treated included rainbows, a particular
Occasionally he did not paint any of these bushy clumps variety of cloud lining, and a special type of scarf.
at all, while sometimes he applied them to alternating
rows of hills in the landscape. Rainbows
Wangdrak also painted vegetative details of a more
linear sort, namely clumps of long-leaved grass. These Rainbows were commonly used in thangkas, and they
he placed along the top edges of crags, positioning them illustrate the celestial nature of the landscape.
in the main indentations at the top of the cliffs. Frequently they were also painted as curved and radi-
Other methods also existed for painting the strips ating bands of colours, waving as they ascended and
of dark green vegetation along the edges of hills. Some often crowned by the deities in the upper part of the
artists combined the series of clumpy dry-brush thangka. All rainbows began with a thin band of maroon
"bushes" .with linear detail. Thargye and Legdrup wash on the inside and proceeded outward in the colour
Gyatsho, for example, first applied a series of closely sequence: blue, green, yellow, orange and red, each band
spaced curving horizontal lines along the edges of the of colour having the same width.
green hills,
Cloud Linings

For finishing the edges of certain clouds, Tibetan artists
also used a similar outer lining that consisted of a series
of contiguous strips of medium blue, indigo and mauve.
and then finished this strip with a series of dabs applied Called phing bris by Legdrup Gyatsho, this technique
at about every second curved line: shows some similarities to a non-shaded colour gradation
called tsho sha dkar that was used particularly in the
painting of decorative motifs on woodwork and walls.

in addition to clumpy rounded "bushes" similarly
placed:

•••
._....
• •• •
• • ••

Just above this strip, Thargye also commonly painted
a series of rounded clumps of vegetation made up of
more linear elements:

Legdrup Gyatsho also painted a series of larger bushes
along the upper edge of the vegetation strips on hill-
sides, but he used a combination of lines and dabs when
painting these bushes. As a final touch he added a series
of "flowers" to the strip, placing them in evenly spaced
clusters of three. These flowers were just small dots of
white arranged in a triangular grouping, and they them-
selves needed finishing by the application of a dot of red
dye in the center and the addition of a few radiating
pale red lines to indicate the edges of the petals. Other
artists used similar series of simple flowers in their
landscapes. Cloud outlining.

136 OUTLINING