Portrait of Uncle Ho from agarwood (Photo: tuoitre.vn)

After nearly ten years of attaching to agarwood and then opening an agarwood painting workshop for three years because of his passion, Duc mainly produces and sells agarwood bracelets, incense, and buds.

However, he thought that those products are soulless while what he wants is an artistic message to be exuded from the rare material.

According to Duc, the project started in 2023 from his passion. He wanted to develop this idea, therefore, he looked for colleagues who are really talented in painting, fine arts and especially having his same passionate.

In early 2024, the painting workshop started operating and introduced agarwood paintings to the market.

It took a lot of time to make an agarwood painting. The first step is to choose agarwood pieces with enough light and dark colors, dividing them into each color range.

Then, sketching the image with a pencil on paper, after that tearing and pasting each small piece of agarwood of different sizes with different light and dark colours with a kind of colourless and odorless glue to create a soulful and deep complete painting.

Paintings of Duc's workshop are quite diverse, about historical and cultural contents such as portraits of leaders, national heroes and historical events.

Le Ngoc Duc at his workshop (Photo: tuoitre.vn)

Portraits are the most difficult, because to express the soul and authenticity of the character, it requires the artist to have depth, to highlight the spirit of the character they are portraying. It usually takes ten days to half a month to complete a portrait such as portraits of President Ho Chi Minh, General Vo Nguyen Giap and General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

In addition, Duc's workshop also makes paintings of landscape and zodiac animals to serve the market, especially during Lunar New Year Festival (Tet).

On average, the workshop produces about 20 works per month with four workers./.

BTA