Throughout the years, he kept learning and sharpening his skills. He was named head of a national thangka academy and one of his works has been housed at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
A LIFE'S WORK
Sanggyaipo's latest work, the 56-meter-long thangka on its way to Beijing, has been a long time in gestation.
The 10th Panchen Lama, the head of Tibetan Buddhism in China, visited Huangnan in 1982 and met Gyaimoco.
"I saw my teacher was in tears when the Panchen Lama told him to preserve Tibetan culture and carry forward thangka art," recalled Sanggyaipo, who was 17 at the time.
These words were inspiring. In 2011, Sanggyaipo decided to paint a thangka of all the Panchen Lamas from the first to the current 11th.
Over the course of five years, he traveled to Tibet many times to buy the best pigments, and to India for cotton and silk, the ideal canvas for thangka scrolls.
Sanggyaipo also followed the Panchen Lamas' footsteps to Lhasa, Beijing and Yunnan Province, collecting more than 15,000 photos of the high monks.
He chatted with elderly Buddhists who were able to give him vivid details from the early life of the latest Panchen Lamas. He and 60 other thangka painters incorporated some of these details into the painting.
Sanggyaipo hopes the work will "exhibit the charm of Tibetan art and show my respect for the Panchen Lamas."
SPIRITUAL CALLING
Painting has earned Sanggyaipo a solid living, as prices for thangka have soared now Tibetan art hangs in middle-class homes and regularly fills gift boxes. Most Thangka paintings now sell for at least 10,000 yuan (1,575 U.S. dollars).
Popularity and profitability, however, are not always good for art. Good thangka painters need to have exacting attention to detail, and it helps to have the spirituality of Buddhism, according to Sanggyaipo.
The artist himself gets up at 6 a.m. every day to read sutra. "It's a daily habit to help me meditate and be self-disciplined," he explained.
"Many thangka works are painted too hastily these days, as if they are all done on the same production line," he complained. "They lack the charm you feel with earlier works that were done in monasteries and by devout Buddhists who were expert in painting as well as Buddhist teaching."
Now that thangka painting has become lucrative, Sanggyaipo has found a growing number of young people interested in taking up the occupation.
He has taught more than 50 students to paint thangka, but many lack the concentration and determination for it. As Sanggyaipo said, "If a young man cannot sit still and resist the temptations of computers and smartphones, he can never learn to paint thangka well."
