Almighty painter

Chapter 530 Screen Transformation

"Not all flowers are rich poppies. Sometimes, if you want to restore a beautiful spirit, you must not only learn to add, but also learn to subtract."

He turned to the person next to him.

As Gu Weijing spoke, he clasped his fingers lightly, and the petals fell rustling on his fingertips.

In the composition of "Girl Reading Poems to Cats" by Katsuko Sakai, apart from the central figure, there are only two visual highlights for the audience - the awn and the magnolia tree.

The civet cat is the most common native cat species in the world.

Almost since ancient times, noisy Ngawangs have been everywhere on the blue planet except for the Arctic ice cap.

But magnolia is different.

Affected by the place of origin, temperature, and sunlight time, magnolia is a unique species in East Asia.

To be precise, the magnolia tree is a unique species of Eastern Xia.

Its growth areas are concentrated in Beijing and the warm and humid areas of the south south of the Yellow River. It also exists in small amounts in neighboring countries in Southeast Asia.

It’s not that magnolias can’t be seen in other continents, but the introduction of magnolia tree species from Europe and the United States is a very, very modern thing.

At least younger than the Impressionists.

Throughout the history of the development of oil painting, flowers in the light and elegant style of "Magnolia" have rarely appeared.

The highly saturated flower painting method of white, red, green and purple is widely used by many artists in painting fields of poppies, violets and wild roses.

Bright paint, paired with impressionistic short, broken brushstrokes.

It can restore the exuberant and prosperous growth of these flowers freely and freely, but this feeling was applied to the magnolia tree by Shengzi. From an oriental aesthetic perspective, it suddenly became tacky.

In Wen Zhengming's words, there is no true fairy spirit of "Gu Shehua".

Using Suzuki Harunobu's expression, there is no such thing as the mournful beauty of spring tokens like "an orphan girl carrying a small lamp in the middle of the night".

Eastern aesthetics emphasize calmness.

Asian literati don't like flowers that are too flashy and extravagant. Ordinary girls from well-to-do families wear gold bracelets and gold rings to show their wealth, but if it comes to real prominent people, gold has always been forbidden.

Too tacky.

This is especially true for the aesthetics of flowers. Only flowers that are noble and quiet, neither kitsch nor stingy, can be the best among flowers and the flower of a gentleman.

"I can use a little bit of beeswax as a medium."

Sakai Shengzi proposed an idea to Gu Weijing.

In fact, Impressionism has gone through thirty years of development since its birth around 1870.

By the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, a large number of Western painters had realized the problems caused by the high-saturation color matching of Impressionism and the continuous visual bombardment of natural light and color.

For example, Ray Noah returned to classicism in his later years and began to draw big-butt, fat lolita like Rubens.

Post-Impressionism, the overall development of the artistic style, to a certain extent, followed the line of reducing natural light and color and increasing the painter's personal emotional expression. It was based on Impressionism and was born on top of it.

however.

Post-Impressionist painters like to introduce a large number of color dots, knife smearing, rotating twisted brush strokes and strong color blocks, completely replacing objective colors with subjective emotions.

The threshold for appreciation is relatively high, and ordinary viewers who have just appreciated Post-Impressionist works may not know what they are painting.

It's a bit like a mental patient talking to himself, and it even feels like there's serious light pollution.

For example, Van Gogh's "Starry Night" and Gauguin's "Woman Holding a Mango". Including Seurat's Neo-Impressionist color point paintings, to a certain extent, they also have this meaning.

This is another artistic development context, and it is not the same as the feeling Gu Weijing wants to create.

Katsuko's reaction was quick.

Gu Weijing just said a few words, and Miss Sakai almost immediately followed his pace and figured out what the missing elements of her painting were.

Elegant.

Under normal circumstances, her proposal of adding beeswax to the medium is indeed a very original and good idea. Using beeswax as a medium for fusion is far better than using turpentine, linseed oil, or even various modern chemicals. Solvents are ancient.

A very old school traditional way of painting.

Its history can almost be traced back to the "prehistoric" period of tempera painting. In modern times, few painters use beeswax as a medium.

The advantage of beeswax is that it can make the color layer adhere more firmly, prevent the picture from breaking, and can create little matte effect.

Use small particles of solidified pigment to create diffuse reflections of pigment.

When the light is dispersed, the atmosphere will naturally not be very hard and will give people a light and soft color feeling.

However, every development in color science happens for a reason.

Beeswax has almost been abandoned by modern oil painters, or even if it is used, a layer of beeswax is used at the end of the painting to thicken the painting to create a matte effect, rather than being used as a medium.

The root cause is naturally not because flaxseed oil sounds more environmentally friendly and healthy. Art students feel hungry in the middle of painting, so they can use it to cut cucumbers and spinach, use the palette to prepare a reduced-fat vegetable platter, and they can also take photos and post them on Instagram. This is a weird reason. .

Give an easy-to-understand example.

The role of beeswax as a fusion agent in the studio can be compared to the role of vancomycin in ICU and emergency rooms. Vancomycin is hailed as the last line of defense against bacterial infections. It can be said to be an antique among modern antibiotics. However, in the early years, it was difficult to purify and remove impurities in the finished product, so it had considerable toxicity.

It is difficult to buy it in ordinary pharmacies. In many large hospitals, only doctors above the deputy director level can prescribe prescriptions based on the principle of first saving lives and then treating diseases when encountering very difficult drug-resistant superbugs. .

Beeswax is the last prescription and the last choice for art students when preparing paints.

In addition to the difficulty in mixing, it is also easy to fail to mix when matching, and the pigments are easy to layer and powder, which are external difficulties in use.

The texture of the small particles bonded by the beeswax can certainly disperse the light and produce a matte soft effect. It can also enhance the layering of the pigments and the quality of the oil painting colors.

The entire piece will become rough and flat.

Adding beeswax to paint is essentially a multiple-choice question whether you want a better overall atmosphere or a clearer detailed texture.

Just like drinking ice-cold Coca-Cola in the middle of summer, paired with fried chicken and French fries. While your taste buds are stimulated and your brain secretes a large amount of dopamine, which brings pleasure and satisfaction, it will inevitably be accompanied by excessive sugar intake and obesity.

One link within another, there will be gains and losses.

Generally speaking, this is the rule of the game in the art industry.

Only the most outstanding masters and the most talented geniuses are qualified to negotiate conditions with the brush in their hands.

But being able to put the picture into 128 different poses at will, and do it however you want, and achieve both the details and the atmosphere, is also possible with far greater hardships and techniques than others. In addition, the baldness caused by staying up late in the studio, or gnawing donuts while painting, and not having time to exercise, and the swimming ring growing on the stomach are the price of suffering. At least this is what Shengzi declared when she saw her father, who was forced by her mother to go for a run, but stayed at home and rolled around, refusing to obey in every possible way, struggling to slump on the sofa and not go out.

"The fat on my belly is not fat, but the marks and medals left by my hard work in honing my skills." - Uncle Sakai warms you with the solemnity and piety of a monk sitting in meditation. Let you burn it, I am a fat pig with a shameless expression.

In front of his wife's murderous gaze, he fearlessly swallowed a big mouthful of Haagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream and said this.

Shengzi felt that such a choice was not difficult to make.

Emotionally speaking, the innermost thoughts and feelings are more pleasing to the eye than external beauty.

From a utilitarian perspective.

This is a work that will be taken to an art exhibition. This may increase the appreciation threshold of some ordinary viewers, but it is the professional organizing committee and jury that determines whether it can win the prize.

The perspective of professional art judges on works is often different from the focus of ordinary tourists looking at paintings or art lovers when they enter the art gallery.

They will definitely like this unique color shaping and bold combination of retro painting techniques.

"Shh, Katsuko, no, we are going to do subtraction, not addition."

Gu Weijing lightly touched his lips with the index finger of his left hand, as if he was afraid of disturbing the paint on the oil painting. He held the oil painting knife in his right hand and gently scratched the painting.

Sakai Katsuko smiled cutely when she saw that Gu Weijing looked a little childish and innocent.

lovely!

Judging from normal people's standards, what Gu Weijing is doing now is quite innocent and simple.

Ms. Sakai could tell that he wanted to scrape off a layer of color on the completed petals with an oil painting knife.

The difficulty is self-evident.

Is it possible? It may be possible in theory, but just because it's possible in theory doesn't mean it's feasible in practice.

If adding beeswax to the blending agent is difficult for an ordinary strong athlete running a half marathon in 2 hours and 15 minutes, then using a painting knife to subtract colors is at least as difficult as an international athlete running a full marathon in 2 hours and 15 minutes. .

It's just as simple as doubling the difficulty and requiring more stability on the delicate fingertips.

It is already a completely different level of technical requirements.

The oil painting knife is the eraser in the hand of the painter, but its use is much more complicated than using a real eraser.

A finished work is a connected whole, and all parts are closely related.

It's hard to do.

You only erase a certain part of the picture without affecting the entire picture. It is the same as performing a surgical operation. The heart, liver, spleen, stomach and kidneys can affect the whole body.

At least what Sakai Katsuko can think of is that her painting petals are painted in layers. The upper and lower layers of paint have different solidification degrees, different thicknesses, different oiliness and fatness, and even the paint itself is uneven within each painting layer. .

This is not as simple as the chef trimming the fat from the pork belly or removing the skin from the chicken.

First of all.

You have no way of knowing where the specific dividing line between different layers of paint is before you cut, and the squeeze of the knife will itself blur the dividing line.

Second.

During this process, the oil paint will also be continuously pressed into the fibers of the linen canvas, changing the color effect.

This is only a problem caused by the magnolia petals themselves.

Colorful petals are scattered throughout the piece.

From top to bottom, from foreground to vista.

In the process of handling the oil painting knife, it almost inevitably affects the shaping of the surrounding brush strokes. In the end, the entire work is like a skin disease, with bright spots and dark spots.

Even if it is a real eraser, it will often erase dark lead marks around the paper surface. Moreover, you may easily erase the paint, but if you want to erase it excessively, erase a few grayscales and shape it. , which is also an extremely difficult skill to control.

Subtraction is more difficult than addition.

It's easy to take a knife or an eraser and erase an area, or chop off a fat man's thigh.

But what Gu Weijing wants to do now is to cut the fat aunt into Liu Yifei with a few knives, which is very difficult. At the same time, you also want to polish her suspender evening dress into a silk cheongsam.

That would be even more difficult.

To be fair, people who usually do this are not painting, but destroying paintings. The final result can often be referred to in "The Great Disaster of Mr. Bean", which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and is loaned to the National Gallery in London. The head of the famous painting was erased, and finally the effect of a car accident was painted on the entire stick figure.

Just thinking about it, Katsuko Sakai can think of a lot of problems that Gu Weijing's reckless actions may cause on the screen.

but.

She still said nothing.

It's strange that the more rationally something is difficult to happen, the more Miss Sakai looks forward to the actions of Gu Weijing's hands.

The sun was blazing in the sky, a warm breeze blew over, and the leaves above the head rustled. Awang, who was chased by Jasmine in circles in the yard, finally got tired of running. He lay sprawled on the ground, pretending to be a dog, sticking out his little tongue to dissipate heat, and meowing feebly.

This seems to be a good time for miracles to happen.

Gu Weijing felt the feeling of the metal side edge of the small oil painting knife cutting into the surface of the paint.

His face is very close to the drawing board, and his cheeks are slightly tilted, as if he is listening to the breathing of paint.

The oil painting knife can be divided into seven different ways of using the knife: scraping, building, wiping, coating, pulling, patting and wiping.

Among them, building, coating, pulling, patting and wiping are usually used when shaping paint. When reducing paint, only scraping and rubbing with a knife are often used.

After acquiring the legendary knife-painting technique, Gu Weijing discovered that he was not judging the trajectory of the oil-painting knife with his eyes.

Use feelings.

When he picked up the oil painting knife, it seemed as if all the receptors in his body were connected as a whole.

For example, the germinated wheat seeds that were not planted after the spring rain in the valley belt will become tangled and connected along the wall of the bag to form a huge carpet of green sprouts.

Feel it with your muscles.

Use your fingertips to touch.

Even listen with your ears.

(End of this chapter)