Ngak'chang Rinpoche is an incarnation of 'a-Shul Pema Legden - the artist, calligrapher, and mystic-scribe of the 19th Century visionary, Khalding Lingpa.

The scripts Ngak’chang Rinpoche uses are called u-chen and u-mèd. They originate in part from the ancient script: Lha-bab-yig-gé, meaning: script-symbols from the sky-expanse.

Written words are sacred in Tibet, because they carry the knowledge of Liberation. The form of these 'sky signatures' is both ancient and modern. Their spontaneous style was first evolved by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche from the influence of his friendship with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Variants of this style were later taken up by HH Ta’i Situ Rinpoche and other Lamas, including Ngak’chang Rinpoche.

Spontaneous calligraphy is new to Tibetan tradition, and as yet has no rules - each Lama works individually. Rinpoche uses a variety of turnip Tibetan brush which holds a considerable quantity of shellac based Indian ink, boiled for extra density to give unusual crispness and shine. He uses a heavily loaded brush rather than a 'dry' brush, as is used in the Chinese and Japanese styles. Due to the speed at which the calligraphies are executed, ink droplets explode onto the paper, causing the ‘splatters’ by which Rinpoche’s calligraphies have become known.

Hand-made rag paper from Sikkim is inconsistently absorbent, and unpredictable to use. It is pressed between thread-bare blankets, giving each sheet its unique texture. The roughness breaks the edge of the brush strokes allowing tremendous variation in character of each sky signature.