Different styles

Sometimes the same Buddhist stories are presented in different styles.

Ma cites the classic Buddhist story about a prince who sacrifices himself to feed tigers.

Cave 428 and Cave 254 have murals that present the story, but the one in Cave 254, completed during the Northern Wei Dynasty (AD 386-557) is more in the Han ethnic style, looking more unrestrained and free, compared with that in 428, drawn during the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907), which is more ornamental, Ma says.

Because of the complicated procedure, copying a 6-sq m mural would take two to three people two years to complete.

"Now it's easier for me to do a copy," Ma says. "But I have a lot of other work to do, and It took me four years, from early 2012, to finish doing the facsimile of the mural on the east wall of Cave 320. I had to do the management work, write papers and do my own artistic works.

Last year he completed 500 ink and wash paintings.

"This time we used 3-D point-cloud technology to collect the digital information of the whole cave. Based on that we can build a wooden model of the cave and draw the outline of the murals."

Technology

Based on the outlines produced by the technology and the high-definition photos provided by the digital center, artists fill in colors made of special stone such as turquoise, malachite and cinnabarit, and add finer lines that have been missed by the scanner.

"We still need to go to the caves to see the original murals and study their history and artistic styles so we can understand the spirit of the works in those years," Ma says.

The high-definition photo sometimes can be misleading to inexperienced artists.

"They focus too much on the broken or missing parts, and overlook the whole," Ma says.

Wu says the focus of future work at the digital center will be on studying how to present the digital information collect to audiences.

Ma believes artists' work being based on 3-D printed copy works of the murals will become the norm.

In June, the Dunhuang Academy presented the 3-D printed Buddhist sculptures and their holographic images at the recent 12th Five-Year Plan Scientific Innovation Exhibition in Beijing attracting a lot of attention.

"If the new technology can do the job, we will let it do. We artists do what it cannot, such as adding to the thickness and granular sensation of the copies."