Thursday, January 29, 2009

First Thangka: Day 23


After spending a week holed up in my room finishing the landscape, I went back to school this morning to check in with the teacher and to start the next step in the process, the addition of color. Not that color hasn't already been added, but the application technique is a bit different. Whereas the sky and ground are built up out of layers of light wash, what I'm putting on now is fairly solid color with only a little water added to make the paint more spreadable. What you see in the photo is what I finished after one day's work.

Life has been rather quiet and routine, mostly painting, helping a classmate with his English each evening, and writing a web site to be launched on my return to Japan. I watched a lovely movie over the weekend, one that reminded me of a John Irving novel (though it's not) , a story about an orphan, about wounded souls, impermanence, the interconnectedness (and often seeming arbitrariness) of life, a story populated by eccentric characters in exotic locations, a story told with a sense of wonder and love of life. It made me smile and laugh and cry. I don't think I saw anything better from 2008.

I've also bought a kurta for next month's wedding in Bangkok, but I'm not posting photos until after the wedding so as to give away too much to the bride and groom – or to Mutsumi.

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