Art Restoration of A Different Kind

A couple of months ago, Robin showed me a photograph of headless statues that he had taken some time ago. These are actually statues of Buddha painstakingly carved out from rock formation. Sadly, treasure hunters had other ideas. They chopped off the heads and probably sold them as antiques to feed their own greed and bulging bank accounts.


Robin asked if I could do a painting of the statues with Buddha's heads intact. Well, I usually don't like to paint something that I've never seen, or somewhere I've never been to... and trying to put back Buddha's heads could be a little difficult. Not someone who would shy away from a challenge, I agreed.

Although Robin did sent me a couple of pictures of Buddha for my reference, I needed to do some more research and thanks to Google! Image, I managed to find tons of pictures and chose a few for my reference.

That was nearly 2 month ago as I've been busy with work, baby and the exhibition (not necessary in that order) and only had time to paint it over the past two days. Better late than never, right? :) Here are step-by-step progress pictures...

1. The Drawing
A rough sketch of the painting... but with enough details to mark where everything is.

2. The First Wash
Some called it First Glaze, Underpaint, Mother Wash... whatever... it serves the same purpose, ie. to lay the colour foundation for the rest of the painting. Here, I used 4 colours to lay the first wash - Cadmium Orange, Yellow Ochre, New Gamboge and Cerulean Blue, and painted them wet-into-wet.



3. Defining The Darks
When the wash has completely dried, I started to define the shapes of the statues and other structures with dark colours - a variety of Arizarin Crimson, Prussian Blue and Sepia.



4. Shaping With Mid-Tone Colours
I carried on to build the shapes with mid-tone colours and at this stage, my brushstrokes were very loose and splashy, just enough to make a representation of the structure as a whole.



5. The Finishing Touch
I added darks on the shaded areas and to make it looked more realistic, I further enhanced the shapes and curves of the statues, this time using a smaller brush so that I can reach the smaller areas. I also made sure the whole composition in terms of colours, tonal values were balanced.... and last but not least, to add more texture on the rock surface, I splattered some leftover paints with a toothbrush and signed it!



This is painted on Fabriano Artistico (Half sheet 14" x 21") using W&N, Rembrandt and M.Graham artist watercolour paints. It took me two nights to draw and paint it, about six hours in total.

So, what do you call this? Art restoration of a different kind? I hope Robin will come and give us more info about the statues and its location.

Hope you like it. Critiques and comments welcome as usual.

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UPDATE

Robin e-mailed and informed me that his friend, an expert in antiques and Buddhist statues commented that the two statues besides Buddha could be further improved by adding thier head-dresses.

"The middle buddha (amitahba) needs no change. Both Kuan Yin and Da Shi Zhi has similiar head dress.. In fact in the sutra, both of them look alike and similiar, with one standing left and the other right."

Therefore, to depict the stautes more accurately, I've made some changes by adding the head-dress. Here's the updated version...