Page 145 - Tibetan Thangka Painting Methodsand Mat, Jackson

real life. Gold jewelry, for instance, needed burnishing,
while faces and bodies painted with gold were to be left
with an unburnished, matte finish. However, in actual
practice this artist also burnished the gold line drawings
executed in a few other places such as an the rocks in
the landscape and in the flames. Most artists were freer
than this in their use of the burnisher, some even
burnishing gold faces and bodies. Nevertheless, few of
the Tibetan painters we worked with burnished every
bit of gold in the painting.
There were two principal types of burnishing.
The first, called "flat burnishing" (leb gzi), consisted
of the uniform polishing of a whole line or an entire
area of gold. The second type consisted of selective
burnishing, whether by drawing designs onto an area
of gold using the point of the burnisher, or by partial
flat burnishing of a large area of gold. In thangkas where
gold was used only for minimal outlining and gold
ornaments, most or all of the gold received a full
burnishing of the first type. The more gold the painting
contained, however, the more important the matte areas
and etched designs (gzi ris) became. In gold thangkas,
for instance, selective burnishing came to perform some
of the functions that would have been fulfilled by
shading and outlining in an ordinary thangka. On large
areas of gold the painter could both draw in detailed
designs with the burnisher and also create an illusion
of volume through gradually burnishing some areas while
leaving other parts unburnished and thus of a darker,
Wangdrak burnishing gold outlines on a robe.
matte appearance.
Burnishing Tools

The burnishing of gold required two main tools. To
begin with there was of course the burnisher (gzi)
itself. This was a polishing instrument with a hard,
generally conical end. Some artists actually used two
burnishers, one for each type of burnishing. The one
employed in flat burnishing had a point that was smooth
and slightly rounded. The one used for executing
drawings on gold needed a sharper point. Often these
burnishers were made by mounting on a handle a gzi
stone, a small cylinder of banded onyx with one end
ground to a tip. Some painters had burnishers that
consisted of gzi-stone tips mounted on elaborately
chased silver handles; and among all the tools possessed
by a Tibetan painter, his burnisher was often the one
that he prized most highly.
The fact that in Tibetan the word for "gzi stone"
is synonymous with "burnisher" possibly indicates that
the use of gzi stones in this capacity goes back a long
way. In general, Tibetans traditionally believed that
gzi stones worn on the body were effective in driving
away harmful influences. This esteem for the stone may
have helped them become established as the burnishing
stone par excellence. Most Tibetan artists would choose
a gzi stone over an ordinary agate that was equally
suitable.
It is likewise possible that the use of gzi-stone
burnishers derived from the practice of early Chinese Rear view of above.

BURNISHING THE GOLD 141