First Thangka: Day 46 - finished

When interacting with others, much of our visual attention is directed towards the face. So, too, when we look at thangka. We tend to pick out the face, not so much because it can tell us about the deity, but from the habit of directing attention there and because the face is usually the center piece of the composition. It's one spot in the painting that requires symmetrical precision and a steady hand, a spot where so much is conveyed – about the subject as well as the painter – in a few simple lines.

There are, I have heard, thangka artists who specialize in faces, guys who command a premium wage for being able to draw the finely balanced lines required for a compelling, life-like face. I won't be one of them soon.

I was nervous about doing the face. As you may have noticed I left it to last. I didn't want to do the face early, do it poorly, and then have to look at every day. That might have been too discouraging. I was hoping, too, that as I completed the painting my hand would become more facile and I would in turn develop more confidence to undertake its painting.

Unfortunately, I took ill this past week, first with hay fever, then with a head cold, and I lost a bit of the physical and mental momentum I had built up over the preceding weeks. When it came time to do the face, I wasn't feeling very confident.

I thought about asking someone else to do it for me. It's not uncommon at art school for students to ask their classmates to help them out in areas where they are weak. Sometimes this can be helpful, but I think overall it's better that students practice themselves. They won't always be able to depend on a classmate and they can't become genuine painters until they can do everything themselves.

So I told myself it was up to me, not someone else, and after a good night's rest I went in to school on Friday and finished the face during the morning session. It wasn't the best face I ever painted, but neither was it the worst. At first I cringed, but from a distance it actually didn't look too bad. The only part I hadn't finished were the eye balls. This is generally one of the last tasks of the painting, opening the eyes of the deity. It's perhaps the most difficult part of the the face. At least it has been for me.

As I had grown used to my not-quite-perfect face, I thought it might be best to ask my teacher to open the eyes. I thought perhaps it was best to leave bad enough alone, and I also thought it might be a nice gesture toward my teacher.

He came and sat down in front of my painting. He looked but didn't say anything. Then he asked my classmate Tsering, sitting next to me, for something. She left and came back with some white paint. The teacher meanwhile had left and came back with a saucer, which he proceeded to use as a palette to mix the acrylic white with a bit of yellow. He still hadn't said anything, but I understood he was going to make some corrections. We normally paint in water-based colors; acrylic is easier to paint over and can be used as a masking paint for making touch-ups.

I wish I had taken a photo.

The teacher began applying the acrylic to the edges of the face and I thought he was going to cover up the shading. But he was simply defining the outer edges, and once he had he started pulling down in broad strokes to paint over the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the ears. His intention, still unannounced, was to repaint the entire face.


I'm not sure why he did this. Perhaps he thought the work was too bad to let pass, though I've seen worse from other students, so perhaps he believed he was doing me a kindness by improving my painting. I thought about asking him, but didn't want to insult or make him feel I was unhappy or upset. I was at first a bit surprised, particularly that he hadn't first consulted me. But once done, it was done and there was no use being angry or upset. It was a good lesson for next time, to just go ahead and do the work myself.

So, now I've got a thangka with a beautifully formed face - and a story to tell about it.


As the teacher began the Buddha's facial make-over late Friday afternoon, he didn't get around to finishing until Saturday morning. Once the face was done, he then added the mantra on the back, the five syllables in Tibetan, each written in a particular location.

Forehead – om
Throat – ah
Chest – hum
Navel – so
Genitals – ha

All that was left was then to cut the painting from out of the larger canvas, trim the edges with a straight edge – and then try to summarize the experience to those of my classmates who came out to offer congratulations and inquire about my future intentions for painting.

Feeling like a grade-schooler

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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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First Thangka: Day 32

I finished 95% of the lining on Friday. Still a few little bits to do, most noticeably the face, but for the moment I'm working on shading, another long and tedious chore, not so physically demanding as lining, but like doing the sky requiring repeated applications of light color and the patience to wait for the color to emerge, rather than splashing it on.


After our half-day Saturday class, I had the great fortune to have lunch with three lovely ladies – Miki, Michiko, and Tsering. Michiko is a long-time resident of Kathmandu whose occupation is still something of a mystery. Miki and Tsering are my classmates.


Only 17 days remain before I leave for Bangkok.

First Thangka: Day 29

As I noted in my previous post, I've started the process of lining and so that you can see what I'm doing I've created a composite. The top version is from Sunday, after I had completed the coloring. The bottom is from this afternoon, after 2 days with a fine brush trying (though often unsuccessfully) to draw very precise lines.



Five hours of this is hard on the shoulders and the eyes. One of my classmates, without prompting, walked up behind me today and gave me a shoulder massage, which felt sooooooo good. He's the one getting his head shaved. Don't know why today and particularly why at school, but this is the scene I found when I came back form lunch.


Also today, one student finished his painting of Manjushri. Perhaps someday I can do as well!

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First Thangka: Day 27

I finished coloring this afternoon and this is how the thangka looked before I started lining. I did only a little bit of that before the day ended, but it has already been a discouraging experience. The lines never look quite like they should and I end up feeling disheartened, that after all this time I still can't get this bit right.

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First Thangka: Day 25

You know how your body feels when you've had a bit too much to drink, a feeling of warm, embracing numbness? I was feeling that way last night as I lay in bed waiting for sleep. But then something quite unusual occurred, flashes of more intense bodily sensations, the kind I normally get while meditating. It seems that meditative state, as a result of regular practice, is beginning to leak out, or to spill over, into more and more of my life.

Last night I had a farewell dinner with a couple of English ladies who've been hanging around here for the past six weeks and who over the course of that time I've come to know a little better. I brought along a bag full of goodies, cashews and apples, Iranian pistachios, yak cheese and biscuits, Swiss chocolate and two bottles of Australian wine. Other residents of the guest house stopped by to say hello, to share a drink and perhaps a laugh. It was a wonderful evening, though a not so terribly wonderful morning. I wasn't hungover, but neither was I feeling like my normal self, either. My first day of painting under such conditions, too.


As you can see in the photo, taken this morning, the colors are slowly starting to fill out the canvas so that now there is little white space left. Up till now this has been for me one of the more relaxing steps in the process. Like coloring with crayons, all you need to do is stay inside the lines and distribute the color evenly.

I've found over the past week that I've been mentally absorbed in the process. Where I used to be sensitive to the passing of time while practicing drawing, now it seems on my thangka that time passes far too quickly. The process has also been demanding physically. As I'm not yet proficient or confident with the brush, I tend to tense up as I apply it to the canvas. The eyes strain, shoulder muscles tense, and I often find after completing a stroke that I've been holding my breath to keep the rest of the body absolutely still. Being completely absorbed in the work, I sit in the same position for an hour or more (on the floor), and by the time I come out of this my body feels like a piece of wire that has been bent into a shape that takes a little effort to unbend. Even so, I'm very much enjoying the experience.


Perhaps by Monday or Tuesday I'll be moving on to what are for me the most difficult parts in the painting, the lining and shading, which require an even steadier hand and which will likely be even more physically demanding.

From tomorrow, only 25 days remaining.

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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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First Thangka: Days 12 - 18

Since my last post I've had seven days of mostly solid painting with only Friday afternoon off to visit the American Embassy (to have additional pages inserted, thanks to all the Nepali and Indian visas that take up one complete passport page each).


The sky in the end took 7 days to finish, and it didn't feel so much like I had finished as I had simply run out of ways to improve. I showed it to the teacher, who said “that may be enough.” And so I started work on the ground on Day 16. The green in the photos is darker than usually painted in our school's tradition, but I needed it that dark to cover up pencil marks I was unable to completely erase.



The photos were taken yesterday in my room at the Dragon Guest House, where I spent most the day painting, and where I'll spend most of today doing the same.

After today only 30 days remaining.

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First Thangka: Days 6-11

Last entry I had just started drawing the Buddha's body in outline form. As the mornings are cold and the classrooms not heated, I was sitting outside in the sun, which was great for staying warm, but not so great for getting work done. Everytime one of my classmates took a break from the classroom, they'd wander outside to see what I was doing and spend a few minutes chatting. Once or twice was not an inconvenience, but I soon found I was spending most of my morning chatting instead of drawing. So I took my canvas and went back to my room at the Dragon Guesst House where I worked for three days, producing this:


I went back to school on day 8 and showed this to the teacher, who made a few small corrections and suggested I make just one set of offerings, instead of two. The result was this revised version:



The following day, number 9, I started painting the sky, which is a long and tedious task of applying blue color with lots of water, layering, layering, layering, until you've got a deep blue at the top that fades away as it descends. This is how it looked at the end of the first day (day 9):



By the end of day 10, it looked like this:






And after this morning's session, day 11, it looked like this:



Unfortunately, the camera doesn't capture, even in closeup, the grain of the canvas or the spottiness, or unevenness, of the paint. Perhaps you can't see much difference between day 10 and 11. Frankly, I was at a bit of a loss when I sat down this morning in front of the canvas. I could see the color was uneven, but wasn't sure how to get it smoothed out. So I picked some small parts and started working and soon enough I was all over the canvas, or at least the blue parts of it.

Other students have told me the sky takes anywhere from a couple of days to a week, depending on how fine you care to work the detail. I think for myself to get it looking as smooth as an experienced painter might take a couple of weeks, and even then it wouldn't look as good. So, I imagine at some point early next week I'll have to put aside perfection and move on to the next part of the painting.

Let's see how it goes.

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First Thangka: Day 5

Didn't do a bit of work on the thangka Friday as the second year students had a measurement class. We were learning the proper proportions for drawing the head of Dorma, otherwise known as Green Tara.



We did, though, have a small tea party, offered by me to all of my classmates and teachers to mark the beginning of my first thangka. Normally we work straight through the morning sesssion from about 08:30 to 11:15 without a break, but we took 30 minutes off for some hot tea and biscuits, a nice respite on a cold morning.



The event was kindly organized by one of our monks, so that all I had to do was pay the bill and show up. I didn't even have to make a speech. The party was announced at the end of morning prayers (during which time the teacher also announced - for the benefit of the many students who don't have much money - that such offerings are not mandatory).

First Thangka: Days 3 & 4

Day 3 was spent polishing the canvas, working out the rough spots and filling in the holes. When the cloth is stretched tightly tiny pin holes may appear, and by moistening the canvas with a damp cloth, the holes can be filled by pushing some of the wet binding into the holes. You can see Thakpa here checking the canvas for any remaining holes. Together we would work the canvas on one side, then let it dry in the sun before working the other side, back and forth six to eight times.



Today, Day 4, Sonam showed me how to find and mark the canvas' center point, then draw in the center line and the outside frame. After that, it was time to start drawing. The teacher roughed out a figure to give me a handle on proportion, and off I went.




According to tradition, when students start and finish their first thangka, they are to make small offerings to their classmates, so tomorrow I'm springing for a small tea party. Tune in tomorrow for photos.

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First Thangka: Day 2

This afternoon I mostly watched while two of my younger classmates, Pema and Tsering, treated my canvas.

We started by putting chunks of animal fat into a pan of water and bringing to a boil. To this was added chalk powder. The chalk makes a nice surface to draw and paint on, the fat binds it to the canvas and makes it a bit heavier and thicker. I don't know what kind of animal fat this was, nor specifically what kind of chalk. I've asked before, but no one seems to know. They just know where to buy it in the market.




This goo was then filtered to remove impurities or lumps.


It was then applied with a piece of cloth to both sides of the canvas. After applying with the cloth, the mixture was then massaged and smoothed into the canvas by hand.


The canvas was left in the sun to dry and a second coat applied. And that pretty much took all afternoon.

Tomorrow, I'll be polishing the canvas.

Having a look at the school calendar today, I noticed that the first day of Losar this year will be the 24th, which overlaps nicely with my trip to Bangkok, for which I depart on the 25. As of today, that means I have 45 days before I have to go to the airport, perhaps enough time to finish this first thangka.

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First Thangka: Day 1

Today I started my first thangka.

We began this afternoon after lunch with a trip to the market to buy white cotton cloth.


This was then cut to the approximate dimensions of the wood frame and four pieces of bamboo sewn into the edges of the cloth.




A double-twined string was then threaded between the cloth and bamboo, wrapped around the outer wooden frame and tightened to stretch the canvas.



Tomorrow, weather permitting, we'll be treating the canvas.

I hope to complete this by the end of the school year in late March. In between we've got about 7-10 days off for Losar, Tibetan New Year, and Mutsumi and I will be spending 10 days in Bangkok for a friend's wedding. Let's see how much I can get done.

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1st Tara in Full Robes

Took a couple of days, but came out pretty good (I thought) for a first effort.






And here's my neighbor on the floor, Tsering, conferring with our teacher.

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Cloudy Days

The last two days I've stayed home to nurse mild cold symptoms, spending the days reading, painting, and watching a movie or two. Today it turned cloudy for the first time in weeks. Appropriately enough, I've been practicing my clouds. Next up is the Dharmachakra.

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Week 6: Tara and the Conch

Last week was partly interrupted by Tihar, but still I managed to finish a slate-full of Tara's and the conch.

This week I've started working on Tara with all her robes (which because of the detail is very slow going) and practicing on some clouds, with which I've been having particular trouble.

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