The Craft
Six stages, in order, that separate a painted image from a thangka. None of them is fast, and the two that matter most are the two that cannot be corrected: the ground and the face.
6 stages · 3–9 months per work
Stage 1: The ground
Cotton is stretched, sized with a hide-glue wash and burnished with a smooth stone until the surface is closed. Everything painted afterwards sits on this. A ground that was rushed will show through the gilding years later.
Stage 2: The grid
The composition is drawn onto a measured proportional grid. Iconographic canon fixes where each figure, throne, lotus and attribute belongs. The grid is a constraint, not a guide — departing from it is a different kind of painting.
Stage 3: The pigment
Malachite, lapis lazuli, cinnabar and orpiment are ground by hand and bound in animal hide glue. Each mineral has its own working window before the binder sets, so the palette is mixed in the order it will be used.
Stage 4: The modelling
Flat passages of colour are built up and then modelled in fine layers, with the shading placed according to where light falls on the figure rather than on the canvas. This is the stage with the widest gap between a competent painter and a master.
Stage 5: The gold
24-karat gold is applied as leaf and burnished with agate to bring its brightness up. It goes on last, after the ground has fully cured, and it is never retouched — one pass, so the light falls evenly across every gilded surface.
Stage 6: The face
Eyes are opened last, in a single sitting, by the painter of record. Until that moment the work is considered unfinished and is not shown. It is the one stage in the process that cannot be corrected.
What the work is actually made of
Three materials, and one of them is the reason the palette behaves the way it does under changing light.
Mineral pigment
Malachite for green, lapis lazuli for blue, cinnabar for red, orpiment for yellow. Ground by hand, bound in hide glue, and unmixed for longer than a working session.
24K gold
Leaf, not paint. Laid on a prepared ground and burnished with agate to raise its finish. Gold carries the light of the deity rather than decoration, which is why it is applied last.
Prepared cotton
Sized, sealed and stone-burnished. Supplied unmounted so it can be framed to your specification, or mounted on brocade chosen against the finished palette.
Why a thangka costs what it costs
Three things set the price: how many figures are in the composition, how much of the surface is gilded, and how many months a single painter will spend on it. Nothing else moves it.
- Foundation
- $380 – $2K
- Small-format works by studio painters. Same mineral pigments, same gilding, same consecration — scaled for a first acquisition or a personal altar.
- First acquisitions
- Masterworks
- $5K – $26K
- Large-format works by senior masters, six to eighteen months in the painting. Full provenance dossier, exhibition history where applicable, and a named line of authorship.
- Collector & commission
Series I
Series II
12 works are currently open for acquisition. Every one of them is painted to order; nothing is held in stock.
Read how a work is documented
The dossier is what makes a thangka traceable a generation from now. It is assembled as the work is painted, not after.