Bring the ancient thangka technique to life

Oral description: Gong Juejie, executive vice president of the Tibetan Thangka Academy of Painting and representative inheritor of the Tibetan Thangka Miansa sect of national intangible cultural heritage

Finishing: Zhang Zheng

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My name is Gong Juejie, I am a post-85 Thangka painter and a representative inheritor of the Tibetan Thangka Miansa School of National Intangible Cultural Heritage. Last year, my thangka "King Gesar Horse Racing Festival" was in the permanent collection of the Tibet Autonomous Region Museum.

Thangka is a unique form of painting art in Tibetan culture, which can be stored for hundreds of years, and the traditional thangka creation uses precious mineral gems such as gold, silver, pearls, agate and plants such as saffron, rhubarb, blue indigo and other plants as pigments, and the drawing process is extremely complicated. To draw a good thangka, the most important thing is the basic skills. This process is to use a cat's hair pen thinner than a pencil to carefully draw the outline of the thangka, and the whole process cannot be broken.

When I was 7 years old, my grandfather felt that my paintings had "aura" and decided to let me learn thangkas – to become the fifth generation of the family heir, and to learn art from Robsda, the representative inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage.

The master told me, "To learn thangka, you must have the heart. "It's easy to say, but it's endlessly repetitive and boring to do.

Before dawn, I have to get up and recite traditional metrology. At about 9 o'clock, the master finished the recitation and recited the content before eating breakfast. Start practicing hooking lines during the day and hooking the moon to the sky before you can rest and sleep...

I've also thought about giving up. Grandpa did not rebuke me, while drinking tea, while telling me a story: "I used to paint a thangka, others gave a little ghee, barley to support the family, now it is different, you just have to study, life do not have to worry, we cultivate you, you are also the hope of the family!" ”

At the beginning of this fight, when others go to the tea house to chat, I study the line in the studio; others call me to play, and I still bury my head in practice.

After that, coloring, hooking, and gold, I spent another 3 years learning.

7 years later, in the eyes of master Robsida, 15-year-old Gong Juejie has only reached the "entry" level, but his skills have gradually increased over time...

I think the secret to drawing a good thangka is only two words - persistence.

As the Tibetan proverb goes, if you climb the mountain steadily, you can also climb the Kunlun Mountain; those who regret climbing three steps can't go up the small dirt slope.

The level improved, but I soon encountered a bottleneck - once, when I went out to exchange paintings, in the face of questions from visitors, I had a stomach full of words to express, but Mandarin was not good, and I couldn't say it.

In 2008, I entered a night school in Lhasa, starting with Hanyu Pinyin, and two years later, my Mandarin expression was smoother and there were more opportunities for communication.

As a traditional cultural expression of the Chinese nation, thangka has a very rich connotation. I want to try to seek a breakthrough in historical themes, and the technique borrows from Chinese painting. I heard that Chinese painting has a sketching technique, and in 2016, I came to Tsinghua University for further study.

I try to embed elements of landscapes and birds into thangka works. Looking back on the first fusion of creations, I feel that I have outlined different snowy mountains, lakes and forests.

At that time, many teachers and students were very interested in Tibetan thangka painting, and specially invited me to give them a lecture on the art of thangka painting.

The full exchange, exchange and blending between the two artistic schools is a vivid practice of forging a solid sense of the Chinese national community. Half a year later, I ended my unforgettable trip to Tsinghua with my excellent graduation work "Tsongkhapa".

Today, I incorporate a new element into my paintings – sketching.

Borrowing some of the ways of Chinese painting, I added elements of sketching, landscapes and animals, which appeared to be flexible in thangka. Last year, I won the gold medal in the art category of the first art festival of the Tibet Cultural Tourism and Creative Park with four sets of thangka "Flowers of The Four Seasons".

Innovation, seemingly simple, but not easy, must have a solid foundation of traditional skills. As part of traditional Chinese culture, thangkas should communicate with other painting schools, but by no means lose their own traditions, but enhance each other in interaction.

Today, Thangka is constantly innovating and trying to enter the popular aesthetics, so that more people can accept and appreciate its beauty.

But inheritance, what are the tricks?

The Tibetan Thangka Painting Institute has a characteristic: before the annual enrollment of poor students, gender, age, ethnicity is not limited, tuition is free, only requiring students to be able to "sit still".

We now have 3 classes, Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced, with more than 40 students.

As in my childhood, students here practice white drawing and coloring in the painting academy from Monday to Saturday, and practice drawing lines in the dormitory after class.

But I realized that to learn thangka, we still have to have a cultural foundation, and we must have a better understanding of the art of painting. I encourage my apprentices to study thangkas at least after high school. Today, here, the most highly educated apprentices are master's degree students, and it is not uncommon for university graduates to graduate.

This is by no means a simple doctrine of academic qualifications. Both master Robsda and I believe that the long-term development of students should be considered, and the thangka heritage should be docked with modern development.

Unlike the traditional way of teaching, we provide students with more practical opportunities, such as some important exhibitions, I will bring students to participate, both to learn from others and to show themselves.

Today, with my apprentices, I have participated in the mural painting and restoration projects of the Tibet Cultural Relics Protection Unit many times. In the past 10 years, the Tibetan Thangka Painting Institute has trained more than 300 outstanding Thangka painters.

I also often remind students that drawing thangkas is not enough to rely on the sweetness of the mouth. Only on the basis of reaching the level of our predecessors, casting a solid sense of the Chinese national community, and constantly trying to innovate, can we have a greater space for development.

Source: China Youth Daily