A ubiquitous art roots in Tibet

As an important genre of Tibetan Buddhist arts, the Regong art includes paintings (murals and scrolls called "thangka" in Tibetan), barbola, clay and wooden sculptures, color paintings on architectures, designs, and yak butter sculpture s, etc, which can be found almost everywhere in Tongren -- on the walls, bricks, stones, clothes and buildings. Its content ranges from Sakyamuni, Bodhisattvas, Buddhist guardians and fairies, to Buddhist stories. But telling more worldly stories, including local practices and customs, has become the latest trend. It's given the ancient genre some fresher life. The major types of Regong art include:

1. Thangka

The unusual art form of thangka is intended to nurture humankind's path toward enlightenment, and from the mundane world to sacred reality. Cotton canvas and linen cloth are the common fabrics for thangkas, while silk cloth is reserved for important subjects. Before painting begins, the fabrics are stitched along the edges with flax thread and stretched on a specially made wooden frame. Then a paste made of animal glue mixed with talcum powder is spread over the surface to block up the holes in it. After the paste is scraped off and the cloth gets thoroughly dried, the artist works out the sketches of the images with charcoal sticks. Coloring comes last. The pigments are mixed with animal glue and ox bile to make the luster stay. The whole process usually lasts a month or more.

2. Barbola

This is a special art that employs the techniques of "cutting and piling" to portray objects. In terms of specific techniques, barbola can be subcategorized into "jian dui" (literally, to "cut and pile") and "ci xiu" ("embroidery"). The barbola works in Regong are mainly of the jian dui style.

To make jian dui barbola, artisans select silks and satins of different colors according to type of expression desired, cut them into human, animal, flower and bird shapes of a certain size, and then paste the patterns onto the pre-cut paper models. After that, they are stacked from dense to light colors.

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