Almighty painter

Chapter 576 Enlightenment
“This hazy temperament…”

Gu Weijing scans the pigment combinations on the canvas.

After adding an additional 7000 points to his oil painting skills, it was certainly still a long way from pushing his oil painting skills to the next level.

He didn't even have any noticeable feelings.

But this is relative to the experience value progress bar of 50,000 points from the third level of the profession to the first level of the master. It is also a gap that most painters in the world cannot cross in their lifetime.

In fact.

Not to mention the transition from professional level 3 to master level 1, which can determine a painter's technical strength and whether he can step into the threshold of "international painting master", which is an insurmountable chasm in the industry like a carp leaping over the dragon gate.

Even the gap between Lv.5 and Lv.6.

It would take many painters who don't know the technique ten or even dozens of years to perfect it bit by bit.

Gu Tongxiang has been grinding for his entire life.

Now Gu Weijing is teaching while holding you down and whipping you with a small whip. Now if you don't draw well, he won't even give you a cigarette.

But usually.

It can't be worn away.

After being whipped, he would at most be like a dead pig that is not afraid of boiling water and would turn over, exposing his belly and groaning there. It would not be the right time and he would not be able to get over it.

And these seven thousand points directly account for half of the Lv.5 progress bar.

It is also the result of years of experience of many mediocre painters simply piling up on it.

When adding points, he had no reference and didn’t have much feeling.

When Gu Weijing carefully examined his previous "masterpiece" up close, he quickly discovered the crude use of paint.

“It’s not the mistakes in the details of each stroke, but the imbalance in the creation of the entire color atmosphere.”

Gu Weijing turned this thought over in his mind.

The shadows of the eaves, the shadows of the locust trees, the shadows of the Madonna, the entire painting is filled with a large number of excessive shadows.

Including the processing of the light itself.

Gu Weijing absorbed to a certain extent the ideas when copying "Old Church", and the changes of light in his paintings are quite complex.

Complexity means sophistication.

Complexity often also means not bright enough.

At least for the sun.

Is such that.

The blazing light, like the smoke from a blazing fire, will appear to have an almost solidified color.

While painting, Gu Weijing couldn't help but add white to dilute the sunlight, wanting to create a brilliant color, but the light in the picture looked as if it was fading.

During the painting process, he couldn't help but add black to create shadow colors, which made the paint look quite gloomy.

and.

He used the thundercloud atmosphere of "Old Church in a Thunderstorm" to portray the feeling, and subconsciously used a lot of ochre in the process of color matching.

Sir Isaac Newton came up with the concept of the color wheel when he used a prism to separate light rays to distinguish the lightness and saturation of pigments.

The so-called color wheel.

That is, use red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue and purple and place them on the outermost edge of a circle.

These primordial rays of light mixed inwards, merging and contracting layer by layer to form concentric circles of different colors.

At the center point of the concentric circles, all the light is evenly mixed together, forming transparent light.

In the field of art, the color wheel removes the color "cyan" from the blue, cyan and purple for the sake of symmetry and simplification.

The remaining six pigments of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet form the outer ring.

It also continues to shrink inward.

The further inward you go, the lower the color saturation becomes and the less "pure" it becomes.

The center point pigments do not mix together to form a transparent white.

It's not black in the absolute sense.

Depending on the slight difference in the type of paint you use, you will end up with a slightly pinkish or bluish dark gray in the center of the concentric circles.

The color wheel is almost a large collection of all the colors that can be created on any oil painting canvas in the world.

It is the shadow cast by real-world light on the palette.

It is impossible to replace the light in the real world with a gradient ring.

They won't be pure blue or pure purple.

It is the ripples of the river, the beauty of the mountains, the swaying of the rose fields in the breeze and the faded and mottled stone tiles on the church roof.

But a color wheel is like a map to a traveler, or a coordinate system to a mathematician.

The map cannot move the destination to your front, and the coordinate system will not tell you the answer directly. But it can help you quickly locate the brightness, warmth, coldness, and saturation of the colors used.

Tell the painter where each piece of paint belongs in the overall color set.

When painting "Old Church in a Thunderstorm", khaki might have been the brightest color on Carroll's palette.

But across the pigment color wheel.

Khaki is actually a pigment of medium brightness and medium temperature.

The temperature of a painting is always a relative quantity.

The exact same color, when combined with different background tones, will express completely different emotions, just like the exact same moonlight, when shining on the faces of people in different moods, will make people feel different images in the moonlight.

Khaki is the color in the middle ground.

When painting a cold background like the sky or night, adding ochre will make people feel warm.

However, when painting scenes in the daytime or under the sun, this earthy yellow main color will appear as if covered with a dust storm, becoming gray and dull.

No glamour.

The yellow paint is not necessarily a flaw in the work.

When used properly, it can create the grainy look of an unpolished, weathered surface.

Just like the composition of this painting.

Solemn...or rather, the temperament of this color has the aesthetic of ancient Greek tragedy, as well as the melancholy of endless yellow sand blowing in your face.

Aestheticism is a neutral word.

Depression as well.

In the corridor of the Dulwich teaching building, there is often a group of portraits of Nikolai Ivanovich Fechin hanging. Every day on his way to and from school, Gu Weijing would pass between the portraits.

Fei Xin is a very typical example of a great painter who can play with all kinds of yellow pigments.

He was born into a woodcarver's family on the south bank of the Volga River in Kazan.

In 1901, Fei Xin, who only had a primary school education, was recommended to the Repin Academy of Fine Arts as an auditor because of his outstanding talent in painting Orthodox icons.

Fortunately, he received careful training and special care from Repin himself.

He uses a lot of yellow blocks in his landscape paintings. When painting landscapes, his works are natural and pure, with a strong decorative meaning.

But in portraits, it will be combined with the transition of various cold colors to become the blurred background of the picture and the rough clothes on the body, thus highlighting the pearl-like fragility of the character itself.

Nikolay Fechin is one of the few great painters who can combine the elements of warmth, beauty and melancholy very well.

By the way.

Among all the great Russian painters, Fei Xin himself is the painter who likes to use the oil painting knife + finger painting method the most.

Many times I'll throw away the paintbrush completely and use scrapers and fingers to apply the paint instead.

The smooth and clever transition between the powerful accumulation of colors and the gentle touch of the skin surface to reveal the baby-like texture is the most representative painting feature in the minds of art critics.

and so.

There is nothing wrong with this color itself.

Take any color combination alone - there is no problem with the shadow, there is no problem with the sunlight, and even the whole painting's atmosphere of neutral colors has no problem at all.

The only problem is what Gu Weijing wants to express.

Is this kind of fatalistic tragic beauty what he wants to express?

Is this kind of mottled, desolate and gloomy feeling he wants to express?
Or.

What he wants to express is the crystal-like exquisiteness that is contrasted by the background color?

Whether the temperament of the picture and Gu Weijing's understanding of the world can be skillfully integrated into one when put into his brush determines whether he can be in harmony with the colors and brushstrokes created by his fingertips.

“Is this the image I really want to convey?”

The "Orphanage No. 20" in front of him seemed to be asking him a silent question.

Gu Weijing realized where the sense of dissonance in his heart came from the moment he picked up the pen.

Wave~
Today's full day experience.

Those tears, smiles, roars, and the improvement in oil painting skills that was neither huge nor small, all accumulated together.

It was as if it had pierced through an invisible mist covering the picture.

I seemed to hear the sound of something being broken in my ears. It was an exceptionally light heartbeat and also an exceptionally heavy breath.

Like hallucination,
Clearly audible.

Myanmar is a Buddhist country where legends are prevalent.

India is the birthplace of Buddhism.

Mona had studied related stories with him as part of her homework, and they had read Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha together under the shade of the trees on the lawn at Dulwich.

According to legend, Siddhartha Gautama lived a long life and finally lost his goal. He walked along the river bank. Fatigue and hunger made him weak. He wanted to jump into the river to end his life, end the huge nothingness and huge nightmare, and finally gain great relief.

At this very moment.

"--and suddenly, from some remote corner of his mind, from some past of his weary life, came a sound. It was a word, the ancient syllable 'Om' that all Brahmans begin and end their prayers with, an Indian Sanskrit word. It was a sound that meant everything, a collection of goals, desires, pains, joys, good and evil, a symphony of life, a perfect symbol of perfection. It was 'perfect' or 'flawless.'"

"The moment he heard this voice, Siddhartha's long-sleeping soul suddenly woke up. He realized himself again, realized the indestructibility of life, and gained enlightenment from then on."

Complete enlightenment.

After several months of sedimentation, repeated practice of dozens of paintings, and then going through inferiority, frustration, joy and pain, love and temptation, persistence and giving up... after going through all these, when Gu Weijing stared at this painting for a long time.

The moonlight shone on him from the window.

Gu Weijing finally heard the voice of enlightenment described by Hesse.

perhaps.

This is what Ms. Katsuko calls “the revelation of the heart.”

Gu Weijing smiled silently. A kind of joy surged from his chest to his heart, pure as a monkey who got a banana, and peaceful as a monk who realized the Zen of a great monk.

He got it!

Why does he think the work is dark?

Why is the color matching not smooth enough?
Why are they both painting in the same yard, but Miss Katsuko just stood in the sun for a while, took a walk, and she created a work of "painstaking effort", while he has been painting for several months in a row, but is still stuck at "feelings in the heart" in the emotional rating of the system panel and cannot break through. When he is not in a good state, he may not be able to reach the level of "feelings in the heart"?
Because... this is not his painting.

This gloomy feeling was not what he imagined the orphanage to be like.

He didn't look like the Uncle Alai he knew.

Uncle Ale was dark and weathered, and even when he met him, he looked very depressed.

But only after contact.

Only then will Gu Weijing realize it.

Uncle Ale has never been a gloomy person in his heart. He has always been a determined and strong person.

He listens to music, reads novels, laughs, jokes, and studies the "Guide to Picking Up Girls."

He just looks cool and weathered.

The inner emotions are very delicate and vivid.

Uncle Alai did not have that kind of numbing pain.

He was not the kind of person who, after being tortured and scarred by life, just accepted everything submissively, like a leaf of duckweed in the wind, drifting with the wind and finally falling under a big locust tree, like a puppet whose personality was dissolved by the bitterness of life, with the depressed feeling of an old father who silently washed his daughter's hair.

More than numb.

Uncle Alai is so lively.

A truly numb and desperate person would not stare into Gu Weijing's eyes and say to him such stubborn and hard words as "If God doesn't protect me, who will? I am a good person, so I believe that bullets will avoid me."

He is not a duckweed.

He is a piece of green bamboo that is tightly gripping the ground and will not let go, or a wooden stake that is firmly stuck in the ground and cannot be pulled out no matter how you shake it.

Uncle Alai doesn't even have the tragic color of Greek mythology.

The most profound tragedy of Greek mythology is the fate that can never be escaped, and that spiritual struggle can never resist the shackles of fate.

Ordinary people, nobles, and even gods.

What is destined to fail will fail, and what is destined to perish will definitely perish.

No matter whether they were once the great heroes praised by people for their outstanding talent and elegance, no matter whether they were soaked in the water of the Styx, wearing golden armor and holding swords that could cut hair.

No matter if they have been preparing for a hundred years.

When the last scene comes.

that second.

When the ending bell rings.

Fate will surely strike them in the Achilles' heel with indifference and ruthlessness.

No matter how they resist, they are like flies caught in a huge spider web in the dark, destined to be wrapped tighter and tighter and dragged into the abyss of pain.

Whatever the oracle said they would be, they would become.

Prometheus was the son of the goddess Gaia. He had the ability to predict the future, but he was chained to the Caucasus Mountains, where an eagle pecked at his liver every day and he was unable to escape.

King Oedipus struggled all his life to resist the oracles of the gods, but gradually ended up killing his father and marrying his mother. In the end, he blinded himself and chose self-exile in pain.

Medea was so smart and tenacious. She helped Prince Jason complete the impossible task and successfully seized the Golden Fleece. She thought she had won love, but at the end of the story, in front of Prince Jason, she killed the two children she gave birth to him, and drove away in her dragon chariot without looking back.

In Gu Weijing's mind, Uncle Alai is not such a person.

Uncle Alai's career is certainly tragic in a certain sense.

True.

A narcotics police officer whose career came to an abrupt end because he was determined to destroy drugs.

This, of course, has a strong, almost indissoluble flavor of Greek fatalistic tragedy.

However, Uncle Alai never compromised for a moment.

He neither gave in painfully because of the mockery of fate, nor did he become unlike himself because of the struggle for power, gradually becoming the person he hated the most when he came out of the small mountain village.

Fate whispered in his ear - "Be a bad guy, and I will promise you power and wealth. Two million dollars, and you will become a general in a few years."

Uncle Alai turned around, set a fire and ran away.

I don't want to play anymore.

The devil who offered a price for buying souls was left there in a mocking manner.

He exiled his career but not his heart. He still fulfilled the promise he made when his adoptive father kowtowed before his death.

He wants to be a good man who stands tall and upright.

So deep in his heart, that weathered, charred, mottled body, the heart was still soft and flowing with hot blood.

It was not scorched by life, making it numb and dull.

He didn't even let go of the pain, and cursed this unfair society in his resentment and anger day and night.

He just got tired of it and let it go.

Choose a different way of life.

Poor but not shabby.

Gu Tongxiang is stingy simply because he is poor. Even if he had money, he would want to save it all for his grandchildren in the future.

But as for the part left for himself, he would act like he had ten dollars if he had ten dollars, and like he had a hundred dollars if he had a hundred dollars.

If one day.

Old Man Gu has really become rich. He doesn't have to worry about his children and has a million or eight hundred thousand yuan of spare money at his disposal.

He could definitely take off right where he is.

Let all the neighbors see what it means for a local dog to turn into a phoenix, fluttering around in the sky.

When I was young.

If he wasn't trying to show off, he would have used the money from buying that second-hand Lexus to buy a house.

At least now there is a jade and antique shop next to Grandpa Wu’s house.

It should be theirs too.

And Uncle Alai, he just transcended.

As a janitor with almost no income, Uncle Alai would read a book and smoke slowly every day.

When I was his assistant, Uncle Alai would flip through books and smoke slowly every day.

Gu Weijing had no doubt that if he gave the other party one million dollars, he might still live his life flipping through books and smoking very slowly every day.

same.

None of the children in the orphanage, from Budao who suffers from autism to Jasmine who inherited AIDS, have the crystal-like fragility, self-pity, and feeling of being unable to withstand the wind and rain.

Should they be vulnerable?
of course.

Being without a father or a mother, one should be vulnerable.

Growing up in an orphanage, one should feel resentful.

People who are born with illnesses should be more fragile.

……

But no matter what, they should have a thousand, ten thousand reasons to become fragile.

But after getting along with each other.

Gu Weijing knew that they were not fragile.

There are fragile and helpless children in the orphanage, but there are also many children who have a strong vitality deep in their bones.

The poplar trees growing in the yellow sand have to dig their roots deeper than the landscape trees in the botanical garden in order to survive.

If you don't give Budao chocolate, he will open his mouth and make bubbles, trying to bite your hand. Or if your own King Awang is dragged away by Jasmine to play with him and looks so depressed, you can tell whether these children have strong vitality.

Then.

Does it really matter where the statue of the Virgin is placed?

Or.

Is it true that because of the malice of the colonizers, the suffering you are born with, and the extraordinary injustice of fate to you, you must live a more depressed life than others?
Is the curse of fate destined to be so indestructible?

All artistic traditions are truly alive only when the creators add something of their own to them.

Take this art critic's opinion as a standard.

The first painting that Gu Weijing made, "Good Luck Orphanage in the Sunlight No. 1", was not a truly living work.

Because there is no soul in it.

just now.

After twenty iterations.

The painting in front of him, "Good Luck Orphanage in the Sunlight No. 20", has not yet truly come alive and touched the depths of his heart.

Because this painting reflects Chen Shenglin's opinion.

Rather than Gu Weijing’s opinion.

There is no right or wrong in the opinion itself. It cannot be said that Gu Weijing's artistic accomplishment is higher than that of collectors, or that his thoughts are more profound.

but.

Gu Weijing had never witnessed anything that Chen Shenglin had experienced.

He is not a billionaire, nor is he a candidate for parliament. He has no way of thinking from the perspective of a city or a country. He has never experienced the deliberate ridicule or inadvertent disdain of his overseas partners.

Gu Weijing had no way of meeting as many people and experiencing as many things as Chen Shenglin, traveling all over the country and witnessing the most prosperous neon cities around the world.

This raises questions about the fate of the land under our feet and the history of the past hundred years, which has experienced ups and downs but ultimately could not escape the deep poverty.

Gu Weijing could not come up with such profound insights as “5% developed countries”.

These... from composition to ideas, all are Boss Chen's things.

In the industry's chain of contempt, artists who come from illustration backgrounds are often considered inferior by serious artists who come from places like art exhibitions.

That's the reason.

After drawing too many illustrations, some painters often develop this habit in their creation. They are used to treating their works as containers for other people's thoughts rather than the soil for their own opinions to take root.

(End of this chapter)