Bracelets, jewelry, handicrafts, and agarwood incense are so popular, so have you ever heard of agarwood paintings?
Portrait of President Ho Chi Minh – Photo: LE TRUNG
Le Ngoc Duc (30 years old, owner of Duc Hoc Tram establishment, Tam Ky city, Quang Nam ) and his colleagues have breathed life into inanimate pieces of agarwood into unique and interesting paintings. Surely many people will be surprised.
Unique agarwood painting by a 9X from Quang Nam
For nearly ten years, Duc has been "living" with agarwood because of his passion, and has opened an agarwood facility for three years now, but he mainly produces and sells bracelets, incense, and agarwood buds.
However, the thought that tormented him was that those products were soulless. While what he wanted was an artistic message to be exuded from this rare material.
"The idea suddenly came up, why don't we create a work that puts soul into it and has unique artistic value?", he thought.
So a… game begins. “The project started in 2023, I just had a passion, wanted to develop this idea. Looking for brothers who are really talented in painting, fine arts and especially passionate.
In early 2024, the painting workshop will start operating and bring to the market works about agarwood paintings," Duc said. Only after getting involved can you understand that creating an agarwood painting takes a lot of time. The first step is to choose agarwood pieces (skin type, thin) with enough light and dark colors, dividing them into each color range.
To create a work of art, sketch the image with a pencil on paper. Then tear and paste small pieces of sandalwood of different sizes and shades with colorless, odorless glue to create a complete, soulful and deep painting.
Portrait of General Vo Nguyen Giap – Photo: LE TRUNG
The themes of Duc workshop's paintings are quite diverse, serving the needs of customers, the themes are about historical and cultural values. These are paintings about portraits of leaders, national heroes, historical events.
Portrait painting is the most difficult, because to express the soul and authenticity of the character requires the artist to have depth, to highlight the spirit of the character he is portraying. A portrait takes ten days to half a month to complete.
Only by witnessing and touching each painting can one see that in addition to love for the profession and aesthetic sense, the young men in the workshop also have admiration and respect for historical figures, whose mark they left on life and this country is hard to replace.
Duc next to a portrait of the late General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong – Photo: LE TRUNG
They are President Ho Chi Minh, General Vo Nguyen Giap, and General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.
Looking at it is astonishing, like a portrait, intimate but extremely vivid, the character has been "deposited" like the life he has dedicated to the country. Besides, Duc's workshop also creates landscape paintings, paintings of zodiac animals to serve the market, especially during Tet.
Still not over yet…
Duc said that the works he posted on social networks , people found them very interesting. The unique and special feature of agarwood paintings compared to other types of paintings is that in addition to the artistic value and beauty, agarwood paintings have a value that almost other types of paintings do not have, which is feng shui.
The scent of agarwood brings vitality that many people enjoy, especially middle-aged customers.
Sailboat painting – Photo: LE TRUNG
A painting costs around 3-5 million VND. Paintings that require high skills, great artistic value, time and effort cost 10-20 million VND. In the near future, in addition to developing the agarwood painting line, Duc will also create 3D miniature landscape and countryside works about agarwood.
On average, the painting workshop produces about 20 works per month, with 4 workers each producing 4-5 works. And each month the workshop sells 10 paintings, and the agarwood raw material is carefully selected and purchased from many provinces.
“This is the first agarwood painting product in the country. When hung, it is combined with lamp light to create a more fragrant and sparkling temperature,” he said.
Dragon painting – Photo: LE TRUNG
Mr. Chau Tung Duong (35 years old, a colleague of Duc) said that completing an agarwood painting is more difficult than other types of paintings, because there are only 3 color tones: dark, medium, light. Creating a work with depth is often more difficult than a painting, requiring skillful arrangement to be appropriate and delicate.
On average, it takes 5-6 days to complete a painting from the stage of selecting materials to arranging the layout appropriately. "The unique feature of agarwood paintings is that agarwood has natural oil grains, the arrangement shows the depth and soul of the work" - Mr. Duong confided.
Creativity never has limits. Quang Nam is on the map of agarwood. Young craftsmen like Mr. Duc have broken through a new way of playing and doing business.
Perhaps a new opportunity has come, but the greatest of all, when simple things are elevated to art, when consumer habits are broken to create a difference in use and creativity, then it is a splendid game.
Meticulous in every line – Photo: LE TRUNG
Duc's associates at the painting studio - Photo: LE TRUNG
Duc at the painting studio – Photo: LE TRUNG
Painting of 12 zodiac animals – Photo: LE TRUNG
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