Thangka drawing course 2013

[Fred vanderZee]

And here are the results! The Thangka Painting Summer Course at the Maitreya Institute in Loenen, The Netherlands has almost finished. Here´s some of the work I did - in Xara of course.

For some info on the subject of thangkas please read my other posts.

Have fun!

[wizard509]

Awesome Fred.

[gwpriester]

You sir, are a master.

[Big Frank]

absolutely beautifully drawn fred
hartelijk gefeliciteerd

[gray]

I love the detail you put in this kind of work, Fred.

[A Wrigley]

I Love these just BRILLIANT!.

[Fred vanderZee]

Thanks all. I have been sketching on some flowers, foliage and rochformations at teh bottom of the image. Wil lpost them when I finalized them in Xara.

[Fred vanderZee]

Aaand some more images and details. It's getting quite an interesting picture.

[Albacore]

Really lovely drawing Fred. Can I ask do you use some of your older files in your new drawing or always start from fresh each time. The only reason I ask as most of your drawing are symbolic and have repeating themes. Still a 5* drawing and I do like your sketching.

[Fred vanderZee]

I always start with an empty grid. Depending on the image I re-use body parts. Some buddhas share the same body, however they have other garments, more or less arms etc. The Medicine Buddha for instance is actually quite the same as the 'normal' Buddha, just another colour, hand gestures and flowers and bowl. Other images are totally different, so I draw them from the empty grid.

I re-use offerings, jewelry etc. sometimes. If you look at my other pictures you can see that some of these are the same, or just with some minor changes. And some are totally new. For example, the bowl in the offering is recoloured from another image, but the fruit is redrawn. This way I am building up a library of elements.

The lotus throne in this drawing is new, but some of the thrones in other drawings are just copies. Just as in the traditional paintings where the artist had some prefab thrones as well. There are not many variations anyway.

Landscape elements like hills, clouds, water, trees, flowers, people and animals are always newly drawn.

Gold such as on the garments is also drawn for each painting.