First Thangka: Day 37

Today was a holiday at the monastery and so a holiday as well at the art school. The only ones to show up to paint beside myself were the sixth year students, who are working on their final exam, a complete thangka that must be finished within 45 days. Like me, they're on a deadline and so don't take much time off.

Since it was a holiday, all the normal rules were not enforced, including the rule of working in silence. Three students were playing music through their mobile phones, and not with earphones, but over the crappy little mobile phone speaker. Three. At the same time.


I packed up and went to my room and painted. And here's where I was at the end of the day. You may note, if you download the photo and enlarge it, that the robes have been shaded, the shadow behind the body and head added (though not yet finished), some fire on top of the norboo (the collection of round things at the bottom, a mythological jewel, here functioning as offering to the Buddha), and the beginning of shading on the lake. Still to do is filling in the face and shading the body. Hopefully, this will all be completed by next weekend; that's about all the time I will have.

Tomorrow I'll be spending the entire day at a wedding, the cousin of a Nepali friend I first met in Japan when he was a grad student at the university where I was teaching. Maybe there will be a few good photos to post this weekend.

From Saturday then, only 11 days remaining.

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