Almighty painter

Chapter 261 Growth Against the Trend
Do not misunderstand.

Maca still doesn't have a good impression of Detective Cat.

If grassroots amateur painters who draw casually on the Internet can get attention, what do you want them, students from famous art colleges who study hard in cold windows?
The round-faced girl's professional stance is inherently consistent with that of art critics.

Up to this moment.

Maca is still more willing to believe the original point of view.

From the perspective of profound artistic conception and art philosophy, the works of Detective Cat must be, as the shareholders of "Oil Painting" commented, they are vulgar works that are difficult to be refined.

As it happens... Detective Cat draws them beautifully.

That's it.

A truly great work of art needs to be, like War and Peace, both literary and military.

At the same time, it has outstanding technique and profound spirit.

Grassroots painters on the Internet can occasionally draw beautiful pictures that make people's eyes shine.

But they generally lack systematic aesthetic education and a deep understanding of art philosophy.

In addition to the beautiful pictures, the deeper artistic connotation is relatively poor.

The problem that Detective Cat is looked down upon by big bosses must be here.

Beautiful in appearance, hollow in spirit.

Detective Cat is just a painter, not a painter.

In fact, Maca didn’t expect that, in the minds of those art critics, what an illustration created for a fairy tale should look like in order to be called having profound artistic depth.

But that was the only solid guess she could imagine right now.

No matter how painting with a knife is unwelcome.

After getting this new edition of "The Little Prince", let Maca say that the illustrations in his hand are amateurish works full of technical errors.

Maca really didn't believe it.

Even if the only advantage of this set of illustrations is that they are beautiful, to be so beautiful - she was really touched in the deepest part of her heart.

Detective Cat's colorful oil paint strokes are like layers of hyacinths falling in early autumn by the railway in the outskirts of London.

There is no essential difference between falling flowers and the gradually withering weeds in the cracks of the railroad tracks.

But it's just a stare that can make people lose their minds.

For example, in the face of Xiao Lizi's prosperous beauty, do the girls really care about the criticism of the American Motion Picture Association for 20 years that his performance is empty, too hard, and only depends on his appearance?

"Maybe... I'll just buy a copy."

As Maca stared at the illustrated cover of "The Little Prince" for a long time, the villain who agreed to buy the book gradually had the urge to push the head of the villain who opposed it into the water and drown.

Maca was not the only one who was moved by the illustration and changed his mind.

When Maca was going to the bathroom, she met the young girl with the pink earrings. The young girl was touching up her makeup in front of the mirror while calling her boyfriend on her mobile phone to chat about the signing.

Before entering the door, he clearly told them that girls who prefer authentic pictures and illustrations changed their minds in a short while.

The tone of the conversation was full of love for the illustrations of Detective Cat.

When she was washing her hands next to her, she hardly heard how the other party mentioned the excitement when she met the translator Charlie Hawke.

This is the reader fan who came here specially for the translator Mr. Hawke!

What about fan loyalty.

What's more, Maca saw the black international student in the queue.

Not only is this cash-strapped fellow queuing for the book, but he's also holding a hardcover edition in more solid materials!
please,

Spend money to go out and turn left to buy a big pizza and eat it, it is not delicious.

"Maka? Why did you come here?"

Kelly walked around the bookstore several times, and finally found a friend who came with her in the corner of the huge bookstore.

The blonde girl saw Maca holding the book of fairy tales, with her head lowered and gnawing her nails.

As friends living together in the same dormitory, she could see the tangled atmosphere surrounding Maca at a glance.

"It looks good, I don't lie to you. Detective Cat's artistic level is enough to come to our college as a professor."

Kelly crossed her hips with a "told you so" look on her face.

Very proud.

"Tch, a professor in our school basically needs a Ph. Elective."

Maca grumbled.

"Then you don't like it?" Kelly didn't believe it.

"Heh heh heh, it's a good luck for him to draw this time. Sister, I'm judging from one size to another. Although I don't like her, this book is not that bad. The students of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts are too naive to see this kind of illustration. Well, it's not a big deal to show the kids. Just to be clear, I'm not buying it for myself, it's just an Easter gift."

Maca took the book and walked towards the cashier.

"A dead duck has a tough mouth."

Kelly smiled and poked her girlfriend's waist.

"You little girl, why are you laughing? Splash water when you say it, girl, I'm not the kind of person who loses a bet and refuses to admit it. I have done all the tailoring work this semester."

Maca didn't lose, so she took out her mobile phone in front of Kelly and dialed her boyfriend's phone number directly.

"Hey, dear. We have an appointment to go fishing in the Scottish Highlands next weekend, right? Well... I'm fine. You can book two rooms at the hotel over there. That's it... I'm not angry, it's not that you made a mistake. I'll explain to you tonight...don't talk nonsense, don't you say you love me, what's the matter if you don't sleep together. If you want to book more rooms, book more rooms..."

Maca was too lazy to answer the inexplicable and unbelievable boyfriend's yelling on the other end of the phone, and directly issued a verdict: "Not for a weekend, but for the entire next month, I will not maintain an intimate relationship with you. Why? Is my wife willing? "

"Detective Cat is really interesting this time, but don't blame me for hitting you, Kelly, "Painting" magazine has sentenced her to career death, and she will not have a good future."

Maca glanced at Kelly.

"I don't think so. It is the hardest truth in the world that an illustration can be liked by the audience. I think the shareholders of "Oil Painting" may have a big fall this time."

Kelly spread her hands with a smile.

"Time will tell us the answer."

When Maca took "The Little Prince" and walked through the shelves in front of the cashier counter at the door to line up, she suddenly stopped in her tracks.

Oh shit,

Since I bought it all.

or--

Switching to the hardcover version would cost more than a dozen pounds anyway.

Uh, maybe... just do it in one step and just buy a set of "The Little Prince" collection gift box?

"Hello miss, you spent a total of 96.99 pounds on a collection gift box. Are you a member of Waterstone Bookstore...Apple Wallet or PAYPAL, do you need to use cash coupons..."

20 minute later.

Maca and Kelly appeared in front of the cash register holding a dark collector's edition solid wood gift box.

When the teller at the cash register saw such a big customer, the smile on his face became brighter.

Priced from £60 to hundreds of pounds, Collector's Boxes are produced as gifts for hardcore readers.

The collection gift box of Scholastic Group this time includes a hardcover version of the "Little Prince" physical book, a hand-made doll of the little prince, a set of special illustration collections and a set of illustration postcards.

The price in the UK is £96.99.

Buying this thing for a hundred pounds, it sounds like the profit margin is so high that it is a bit suspicious of cutting leeks.

The field that can be placed in the collection gift box is not a black heart.

Money can't buy fans like it.

There are also many board game collection gift boxes such as Dungeons and Dragons that sell for thousands of pounds.

The game collection gift box set of "Diablo 4" under Activision Blizzard, which was launched at the same time as "The Little Prince", is also priced at a similar price.

It doesn't even include the main body, and players need to spend tens of pounds more to buy the game alone, and it still sells tens of thousands of sets.

"Anyway, I guess it will be difficult for me to buy Detective Cat's paintings again in the future, so this time I should show kindness."

Maca didn't wait for Kelly to tease herself, so she made a statement in advance with a guilty conscience.

Her fingertips sprayed on the cover of the solid wood gift box the cover of the little prince illustration on the sand dunes.

"It's really beautiful!"

Maca put the gift box into the shopping bag, and glanced up at the blonde girl: "Kelly, you have to wait until the autograph session is over to take the poster, right?"

"Yes, the signing is expected to end at [-] pm at the latest. There are too many people here. I went to the Starbucks across the street and drank a latte while waiting. During this time, I can read the whole book of "The Little Prince" "

Kelly nodded: "If you are in a hurry, you can go back to school first."

"Forget it, at this point, I won't be able to catch up with the handsome guy's show when I go back. Come to Oxford Street, I just happened to go shopping in the shopping mall next door."

Maca glanced at his watch.

"We met in front of the bookstore at 4:55 p.m., and the signing session should be almost over by then."
-
at dusk,

When Maca found her best friend again in front of Shuishi Bookstore, she was already carrying all kinds of shopping bags, large and small, as if by magic.

Perfume, eye cream, lipstick, high heels...

Parents of students who can learn art in this era are likely to have poor family resources.

Maka's credit card limit is not low, coupled with the entanglement and discomfort of losing the bet today.

She naturally shopped and bought all afternoon.

When it was almost impossible to get any more, I sent Kelly a message and wandered back to the Waterstone Bookstore on the east side of the shopping street.

Normally.

The hottest time for the autograph signing is when you just enter the venue.

Most die-hard fans who really want to meet with authors and translators will line up in advance.If you enter early, you can also listen to the creator's presentation, speak and ask questions.

If you come late, simply buy a signed book.

Therefore, signing sessions in the UK are rarely held in the morning and afternoon. Most of them are only half a day, or last for two or three hours.

Except the writer needs a break.

It is also because 70% of the book collection of the entire book signing can be sold in the first hour, and the traffic after that will become less and less.

When the end is coming to an end, often the author wants to continue to sign, and there are no people in the bookstore.

"Harry Potter", the royal gossip autobiography of the prince and Meghan's couple, "Spare Tire", which is popular among the people and sold more than one million on the first day, can be signed from beginning to end .

However, in the news photos of newspapers, the book signing and signing event of this kind, the queue at the door can go for two miles, and the real crowd is full of people and drums.

Maca and Kelly saw that there were a lot of people in front of the Shuishi Bookstore when it opened today, in a normal sense.

Compared with the top fire books that require ambulances and medical emergency teams to guard the scene to prevent fainting and stampede accidents, the absolute number of readers is not even comparable.

The line waiting in front of the gate before entering the arena is not one-tenth as long as others.

Maca reckoned that when she came back, there should be no one in front of Shuishi Bookstore.

Maybe Mr. Charlie Hawke is already ready to leave.

But there are exceptions to everything.

When the front of the Shuishi Bookstore not only did not shorten at all, but a line that looked about the same length as at the beginning appeared in her sight.

Maca opened his mouth in shock.

A large pile of shopping bags hanging on his arm almost fell to the ground.

"Holy moly!"

Maca put the shopping bag on the white pedal in front of the Starbucks store, and pointed to the crowd who were still queuing stupidly in front of the bookstore at dinner time.

"These people are all here to buy the fairy tale book "The Little Prince"."

she said incredulously.

"I'm as surprised as you are. Are you hungry?"

Kelly pushed a plate of blue plum pancakes with more than half left over to Maca, signaling that the other party could wait and say, "Eat something, look at the situation, I think this signing will take a while, to end."

"Even if the public opinion on the Internet is very popular, Mr. Hawke, the master translator, has a lot of appeal, which is a bit too exaggerated."

Maca sat on a chair, stuffed a piece of pancake dipped in honey into his mouth, and took out his phone while chewing.

She took a photo of the crowd in front of the bookstore across the street, and in the process of choosing a perspective, she inadvertently pulled a large shopping bag on the table and the fairy tale book Kelly put on the table into the camera frame.

Then she edited a short twitter post - [I was pulled by my best friend Kelly to attend the signing event of "The Little Prince".There are so many people queuing at 5pm, it's incomprehensible. 】

"The one drawn by Detective Cat in "The Little Prince"? It's so hot!"

"I bought Yves Saint Laurent Platinum Mirror Special Floral Perfume, which costs 180 pounds. I am envious. On the table is the new version of "The Little Prince". It is much more beautiful than I imagined. It seems that it is not as bad as it is said on the Internet. .”

"It's hard to say, I can't see the pictures on my phone very clearly. I'll go to your and Kelly's dormitory to have a look when I get back to school."

"I'm sure this photo was taken now. It's already this point. Were there still so many people queuing up at the bookstore before?"

"..."

With the increase in the number of viewers below the tweet, alumni continued to like and comment.

Maca watched this scene with a smile.

According to this trend, it is estimated that this tweet will become her most liked and retweeted tweet in the near future.

Kelly has carefully and repeatedly appreciated all the illustrations of "The Little Prince" in the past few hours, and she is very satisfied.

Especially the separate book of illustrations in the collector's edition gift box.

Each page can be individually framed and hung on the bedroom wall.

The blonde girl also saw Maca's new tweet, knowing that the main purpose of the other party was to ask Versailles for the newly bought cosmetics, she still thought about it and said: "The reason for the poster."

"What?"

"I mean, there are still so many people queuing in front of Shuishi Bookstore, most likely it's because of the illustrated posters on the publicity bracket outside the store."

Kelly took a sip of her coffee.

The tourists were all attracted by the illustrations—a conclusion that was the most likely answer she could think of, even if it sounded implausible.

Goldilocks had been sitting in front of the coffee shop opposite for several hours.

Everything that happened in the bookstore happened under her nose.

When she first came out with a shopping bag, the number of readers did tend to decrease.

But there are always new tourists walking into the door of Shushi Bookstore.

People keep coming and going.

After a while, there seems to be a harmonious balance between the number of visitors entering and the number of customers leaving the store.

The store is not too crowded, but under the control of the staff, there are always people waiting in line at the door.

According to Kelly's observation, the readers who are still waiting at the door at this time may not be the same group of readers as the crowd when they attended Dean Hawke's lecture.

These people are more like the foreign student who accidentally walked into the bookstore to join in the fun.

Easter is the second most important festival in the British Isles after Christmas.

As the Easter holiday approaches, the number of passengers on Oxford Street exceeds 20 every day.

There are dense crowds passing by the door of the bookstore all the time, and people are attracted by the beautiful promotional posters at the door almost every minute.

In the Bible story, the gods destroyed the Tower of Babel, and since then there has been a language barrier in the world.People on the mainland are divided by different scripts, ethnic groups and accents, and there is no longer a world language that can connect the hearts of all people.

Then He probably ignored the way of painting.

When the beauty is sublimated to a certain concentration, visual art can moisten everyone's heart without any preconditions and cultural accumulation.

The people waiting in front of the bookstore now, they should just be tourists who just come to shop.

Visitors may never know that there will be a book signing here today, don't care about the public opinion storm on the Internet, have never heard of Charlie Hawk and Detective Cat, or even St. Exupery and "The Little Prince" are completely unfamiliar.

Such people are the majority in the world.

Probably when they got up this morning and sat at the dining table eating breakfast cereal, they never imagined that at some point in the afternoon, they would walk into the bookstore to buy a book of fairy tales.

That's what shopping is all about.

During the leisurely walk, you can find the products that make you feel excited, and then buy them.

It’s just that in most cases, the products that people are willing to pottery pockets may be the clothes worn by the models in the window, the flying cakes smelling like baked flour from Indian Asan, and the floral bottled perfume in the Yves Saint Laurent experience store.

Brick and mortar bookstores to buy books... that kind of option is kind of old school and out of date.

People have come to prefer electronic reading to pages that smell of ink and pulpwood.

The most glorious era of physical books, the days when everyone on the street carried a pocket book in their bag is gone forever. Waterstone Bookstore, which has a good cooperative relationship with Scholastic Group, is already a large physical bookstore with the best financial status in the world. The share of annual shipments is also declining year by year, and even needs to rely on selling coffee to increase income and reduce expenditure.

Nowadays.

A shocking illustrated poster has successfully shifted the gears of history for half a century forward, awakening the impulse that countless people have not had for a long time, to pick up a physical book.

In principle, the illustration poster in front of the Waterstone Bookstore is no different from the photo of the global brand ambassador sports superstar Sun Xingmin on the signboard of the Burberry store next door.

The only difference is that at this moment, the illustration of Detective Cat is more charming than the bright smile of the Premier League Golden Boot.

And buying a book is not like buying a dark Burberry trench coat, which requires ordinary people to eat dirt for half a year.

People glanced at--

watch,

stop,

Heart pounding.

……

In the bookstore, Dean Hawk was sweating profusely.

The old man sucked the ink from the ink bottle, screwed up the pen, wiped off the traces of carbon ink on the 17K rose gold nib with a facial tissue, and signed the flamboyant " HAWK" the letters of these surnames.

cool!

Dean Hawke felt the numbness and soreness from his fingers and wrist bones, but his spirit was still highly excited.

A book signing is the premiere of a bookmaker.

Looking at the sea of ​​people in the bookstore, everyone's eyes are shining with longing light, everyone is singing your name and praising your achievements.

Any writer's heart would be suffocated with joy for this sense of accomplishment.

Translation is called the second creation of books. In the process of localizing foreign masterpieces, the translator is definitely the most critical person.

Charlie Hawke is the Dean of the School of English Literature at Oxford University, and one of the top three translators in England. He has translated countless world famous books and published a polyphonic novel "Broken Random World".

It’s just that whether it’s translation works or personal creations, Hawke’s writing direction is biased towards traditional serious literature with readers whose average age is over 35 years old.

It is often the hot scenes that can only be seen at the signing parties of popular fantasy novels such as "Game of Thrones", "Lord of the Rings" and "Twilight".

It was also the first time Dean Hawke had encountered him.

"I have so many fans. The literary taste of local readers in London seems to have improved a lot over the years!"

The old man was very pleasantly surprised and handed back the book in his hand to the aunt in front of him. While feeling very happy, he thanked him casually, "Thank you for participating in my book signing."

"Yeah, the illustrations in this set of books are really beautiful."

The aunt also gave the dean of Oxford a thumbs up.

Uh.

The corners of Dean Hawk's mouth twitched slightly.

This is not the first time that the old man has heard this praise, and even encountered a reader who asked the staff if he could find the illustration for his signature.

The illustrations are beautiful, Hawke certainly admits.

Many of Saint-Exupéry's storylines are inseparable from the assistance of illustrations.

When the old man learned from the publishing house that he couldn't get the original set of stick figure illustrations this time, it was time for post-production.

Hawk still has a lot of worries, whether the illustrator can realize the artistic conception of "The Little Prince" this time, and whether he will hold him back.

Fortunately, the detective cat should have a relatively deep understanding of the plot of "The Little Prince".

When he saw this set of illustrations for the first time, he was amazed by the expressiveness of the pictures.

But what is the point of this book?
It is his delicate and meaningful words.

At the signing meeting, he always heard praises for the illustrations, and Mr. Hawk felt a little bit sour in his heart.

It happened that a staff member walked by with a large basket of recycled purchase intention statistics of readers who participated in the book signing.

Dean Hawke paused his signature and waved to the staff.

　The 260 chapters released before are in front of the single chapter prompt.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)