User:Kalbuza/Tibetan Buddhist Wallpaintings

The Tibetan Buddhist wall paintings are usually found in Tibetan Buddhist temples in the Western Himalayas. There are some regional differences, but the described techniques pertain as a guideline to all traditional wall paintings in this area. The wall paintings are executed on earthen plaster with the so-called secco-technique. A secco-technique is a painting technique in which the pigments with binder are employed to paint onto a dry (Italian: secco) wall.

Painting Technique
The support for wall paintings in made of earthen plaster, usually consisting of more than one layer of earthen plaster, in which the last layer is rendered as smoothly as possible. The support is covered by a smoothened ground, generally in a white colour. Materials employed for the ground may be caolin, chalk or gypsum, or any other white material deriving from an inert mineral. To organise the painting, preliminary sketches were carried out. Generally this involved the geometric layout of the design with the help of snapped lines and/or rulers. . Compasses were employed mainly for the construction of mandalas. Repetitive designs are in some cases achieved with the use of stencils. Traditionally, colour codes were employed to accelerate and simplify the colouring of the various ornaments and figures. For this purpose each section was given a number from 1-9 or an abbreviation of the name of the colour. Some paintings were embellished with raised ornaments (pastiglia-technique). Either a semi-liquid paste was applied to the painting surface, or a stamp had been previously produced from a mould and then applied onto the painting surface. Depending on the final visible colour of a painting, specific colours for the underpainting were employed. An ochre for example has an underpainting in a bright yellow. Similar to Tibetan paintings, the traditional painting was carried out with shading systems, such as a dry or wet shading system. Shading may be obtained with glazes, or with one of the dry shading systems, such as the so-called dot-shading technique in which minuscle dots of colour cover the paintings surface. Specific ornaments of a represenation may possess gilded surfaces. Gold was either applied as gold leaf or as powder in a binder.