Almighty painter

Chapter 618 Mission Completed (Part )

"Please draw another one. I want to see you draw." Gu Weijing asked in a gentle voice.

"Okay, okay, since you want me to show off my skills so much, I'll draw it for you." Koko bent down and put Awang on the ground.

"Lie down nicely."

Koko patted the cat's head with her palm.

She walked over, took out the watercolor paper, and taped its four sides to the drawing board.

"Shall I get you some new paper? You won't have to go through so much trouble in the future." Gu Weijing suggested.

He could see that the watercolor papers had been mounted.

That is, each piece of new paper is completely soaked in water. After waiting for one and a half to two hours, it is taken out and the water is squeezed out with a sponge, and then it is mounted and dried.

After such pre-treatment, the plant fibers in the paper have fully absorbed water.

When the mounted paper is painted with watercolor paint again, it will not wrinkle or deform due to being soaked.

Watercolor paper is differentiated by its production process and paper weight per unit area, and there are subtle differences in categories such as cold pressed, hot pressed, coarse grain, fine grain, oriental paper, and Japanese paper.

The heavier the paper, the better it retains moisture and pigment, the stronger the paper structure, and the more expensive it sells for.

In theory.

If the painter uses fine paper that weighs more than one pound per square meter, such as the pure handmade paper of grade 640g or above that is made by papermakers using filtered acid-free cotton pulp and paper frames and has natural rough edges when leaving the factory, he can completely save the work of mounting the paper and drying it, and stretching the drawing paper like stretching oil canvas.

Just draw it directly.

Whether it is the flatness, water absorption, or the degree of deformation of the paper, it will perform very well.

This is basically what great painters use. You can use it on both sides when practicing. Even if you are not satisfied with the painting, you can just rinse it and reuse it.

But the price is equally outstanding.

A sheet of 640g handmade paper, the size of A4 paper, costs anywhere from one dollar to several dollars.

It is equivalent to ten times the price of ordinary 300g rotary screen imitation handmade craft paper, or the total price of a large book of hundreds of 190g grade industrial assembly line paper compressed by pulp in a papermaking machine.

The disadvantage of the latter is that.

Under mechanical pressing, paper fibers will form severe stratification. This is the physical property of compressed paper, and no matter how thick the paper is, it cannot completely cover up this property.

Its structural strength is poor, and the paper will turn yellow and become brittle over time.

The paint layers will also be unclear because of this.

As such.

This "poor" and "unclear" are relative.

It's not to the point of being unacceptable.

Watercolor paper is watercolor paper.

There is no need to deny that those handmade papers made in France or Germany that cost $100 for ten sheets are not necessarily pure IQ tax.

But the final effect of the painter's painting is certainly not as exaggerated as reflected in the price.

There is indeed a very obvious difference between a piece of paper worth ten dollars and a piece of paper worth two cents, with the price difference being hundreds of times.

But compared to a piece of paper that sold for ten cents a piece.

Maybe the final product will just appear a little more glossy.

If you put it next to a dollar's worth of paper, a non-professional would hardly be able to tell the difference.

The main feature of expensive paper is its ease of use. Some paper will come with a separate hard backing board for each sheet, and is directly sealed on all four sides. The painter does not have to think about anything or make any preparations; he only needs to paint.

It provides emotional value.

That’s how the art industry works.

You get what you pay for, you get what you pay for.

The higher you go, the more obvious the marginal effect becomes.

Unless you are like Gu Weijing in the past, who inherited the good genes of his old classmate Gu who opened a gallery, and is so stingy that his mother doesn't even recognize him, and who doesn't even use watercolor paper when selling paintings online, but directly uses the cheapest sketch paper torn from exercise books and colored pencils to make up the number, then Miss Elena will think that you have a poor professional attitude.

He was dragged out and whipped on the head in front of the camera.

It was a bloody mess.

After Gu Weijing had enough money for his manual labor, he was no longer stingy with his painting tools and only used better quality ones.

The papers that Koko sells are the cheapest kind.

"No need, no need. Ms. Sakai told me a few days ago that I can use her drawing tools freely, but you should use different paper according to your level. I feel sorry for those good papers that I used to draw little people and make paper boats when I was bored in class. They died unjustly." Koko made a face. "Sister, I have to go for the 'simple and touching' style in the recruitment interview! The skirt I'm wearing is only a few thousand Myanmar Kyats, and any piece of drawing paper is more expensive than my clothes."

She rolled her eyes at Gu Weijing and said, "Well, we can't really treat the admissions teacher as a fool, right?"

Koko is now very frugal and manages the household.

Other people's drawing paper doesn't complain that their drawings are bad, so she shouldn't complain that their drawing paper is troublesome to use.

Blah blah blah.

Start painting directly.

Koko sat next to the old locust tree.

She held the drawing board in her arms at an angle, made a simple draft on the drawing paper, then dipped the watercolor pen in the soapy water and then dipped the tip of the pen into the blanking liquid in the palette.

Blanking fluid and correction fluid look somewhat similar. They are both shiny white chemical liquids made by diluting blanking glue with water.

Watercolor and oil painting are different.

The liquid watercolor paint will flow freely on the paper, and the paint is very light-transmissive, so it is impossible to completely cover the lower layer of paint with the upper layer of paint through masking and glazing.

Especially when covering dark colors with light colors.

No matter how you paint, the color of the lower layer will stubbornly be seen by the audience through the brushstrokes of the upper layer.

Therefore, when painting the distant and background scenes in the lower layer with watercolor, it is necessary to first clear out the main scenery in the foreground of the work, keeping it absolutely dry and blank.

It is equivalent to sticking a piece of cloth on the wall when painting the wall to ensure that the part covered by the cloth will not be stained by the brush.

When Gu Weijing used to paint watercolors.

Less whitening fluid is used.

Firstly, all the scenery in Mr. Wattel's painting "Museum Island" has been painted. His final layer of glaze should have been painted on the underlying paint to depict and deepen the atmosphere of the main body of the entire painting. There is no need to consider issues related to leaving blank space.

Secondly.

White space fluid is just a means to assist painting.

It is not necessary for watercolor white space.

If you are not careful enough, the surrounding base color may be easily cleaned up and faded when cleaning the whitening liquid.

There are many alternative watercolor techniques such as tape, crayon, colored pencil, and washing method.

Each of these blank space methods has its own advantages.

For watercolor masters with good enough techniques, painting watercolor is like putting together a puzzle.

Before they started painting, they already had a very clear idea in their minds of what kind of warm and cold tones each area should express.

The master can use his brush to accurately cut out the spatial boundary between the painting subject and the surrounding environment.

From outside to inside.

From vision to foreground.

Stroke by stroke, without any external auxiliary tools.

They use a paintbrush, as if carving a flower that gradually blooms from the periphery to the center, and use the "negative method" of spatial cutting to completely replace the rigid blank space effect, thereby creating more refined and vivid works.

These are too demanding for Koko's Level 2 entry-level watercolor techniques.

Miss Koko was not a diligent student in school.

But what makes Koko so smart is that she always knows her own worth.

When facing the teachers at the campus recruitment fair, she knew that her character, which was based on her slacking grades in an international high school, should be more important than the paper used in the portfolio, as she was a poor, smart and photogenic girl: "Hire me, hire me, hire me! I'm the type that can be printed in next year's diversified recruitment brochure, so cute!"

And facing the drawing paper in hand.

She is not at all pretentious.

Again, she is not at the point where she can reason with the paper with her technique, and when it comes to taking shortcuts, Miss Koko will never be pretentious.

Brush brush.

In a few strokes, she used white space to cover any part of the foreground that might have been contaminated by uncontrolled paint flow while painting - that is, the cat in her arms.

In the visual relationship of the work.

The big cat in the girl's arms in "Self-Portrait" is the object closest to the audience and is closest to the front.

"Does this cat look like Awang?"

Koko pointed at the cat on the drawing paper that looked like a rice dumpling due to the white space liquid and grinned.

She began to add color to the picture.

Gu Weijing sat nearby and observed slowly.

Koko has come to the orphanage and has been painting in the yard under the guidance of Katsuko Sakai for almost a month.

During this period, whenever he looked out from the window of the small studio upstairs, he would frequently see Koko standing or sitting next to the drawing board and easel.

But he realized.

It was the first time for me to watch Koko paint stroke by stroke up close.

Her writing style is just like Koko herself.

Dry and light.

Put the quality of your technique aside for now, but never hesitate when you put pen to paper.

Don't procrastinate, don't be muddled.

Each stroke is a stroke, each painting is a painting.

Koko's painting habits are quite different from those of Gu Weijing and Sakai Katsuko.

She does not frequently make complex and delicate switches between flat-tip pens, hazel-shaped pens, round-tip pens, and brushes of various sizes.

She uses a dry painting method that is more friendly to watercolor beginners.

Except for occasionally picking up a small-sized drawing pen to handle some long and thin outlines, I almost always use a common quarter-inch No. 4 watercolor pen to paint from beginning to end.

Pull the brush lightly.

It was the ink-blue sky, the blurry sun, and the faint clouds.

The girl stood under the sky, her eyebrows and eyes were so delicate that they looked as if they were traced on wax paper.

Gu Weijing noticed that Koko did not arrange her color palette according to the standard color wheel method or the three primary colors configuration pattern.

But she likes to use highly transparent and diffusible pigments.

All the brushstrokes painted on watercolor paper are light, transparent and bright.

He had already noticed this characteristic of brushwork when he saw the "Self-Portrait" left by Koko on the drawing board.

At this moment, I am standing next to her and watching her paint.

This undoubtedly deepened this feeling once again.

Koko paints in watercolor, but the marks left by the brush tip and the scratches on the paper are more like photocopied prints.

Limited by watercolor techniques and proficiency in brushwork.

The texture of her paintings is not very delicate, but she uses dry painting method to create a fresh temperament like splashing water.

People are drawing.

People are in the painting.

Like the grassland under the full moon, the lake on the grassland, and the moonlight in the ripples of the lake.

When Koko was painting this picture of a girl holding a cat, she hummed a tune out of habit.

Gu Weijing's exposure to music was far less than that of a girl like her who had been practicing dancing since childhood and grew up surrounded by melodies.

This time.

He couldn't hear what song Koko was singing.

He didn't even understand whether there were any lyrics in the song that Koko was humming.

It was like a fugue composed entirely of "meow" and "meow" with different beats.

The "meow meow meow" sounds chased after her soft humming, like a group of cats chasing and playing.

"Meow."

Awang stretched his neck as far as he could, pricked up his ears, and swayed his head along with Koko's "meow meow" song, as if he was confused and trying to figure out what the other person was saying.

Gu Weijing watched Koko paint and listened to her humming a song.

Not a word.

Just now, Koko was holding the cat and telling him about an actor's dreams and his depression by the tree.

For a moment, Gu Weijing thought he had caught the shadow of the theater cat.

Not bad indeed.

The image of the cat named "Gus" became more full than ever in Koko's narration.

It lives in Gu Weijing's heart.

At this moment, it was still sitting in the ruins of the Roman fortress in his heart, following the chanting of evening prayers with its claws and tapping the bronze statue of the philosopher king.

Gus came alive.

But that wasn't Koko.

Or in other words, that is not the complete Koko.

That desolation and sadness belonged to Koko's mother. In just a moment, he saw the shadow of his mother between his daughter's eyebrows.

What does Koko look like?

She has the bleakness of her mother and the majesty of her father. She is the backbone in front of her stepmother and the most popular cheerleader among her classmates...

She is not the afterimage of fresh green on the dead leaves.

Each of Koko's personality traits is like a blooming petal falling from a branch in late spring.

She is so versatile.

She was the girl who said she would protect herself at school.

She is a girl who works part-time as a piano player in a bar to support her family.

She was the girl crying on his shoulder in the moonlight.

She is holding a cat...

……

Koko is also the girl who is beside him now, meowing and humming a song while painting on the watercolor board.

She is like a versatile cat.

Charming cat.

Gu Weijing's mood seemed to be echoed by the meow song that Koko was mumbling.

The rhythm of the tune hummed by the girl struck his heart with every beat.

The old patriarch of the Jellicle cat family lay in the sun, his little purring during his nap matching her beat, his chest rising and falling rhythmically with her humming.

The melody that the old lady cat Jenny Dot was directing everyone to sing in the basement also became Koko's tune.

Jenny nodded and raised her arm, saying, "Ready, one, two."

then.

The mice standing in line below the stage took a breath in unison and sang loudly: "Meow, meow, meow meow meow!"

The railway cat Skimpross, holding up his big tail, hums a meowing song while patrolling between trains. The mysterious cat Macavity and the fat cat Bastof fight for rice pudding in the kitchen, and the collision of spoons and bowls becomes the accompaniment of the meowing song.

Even Gus, who was banging on sculptures among the ruins of Rome, kept up the beat.

(End of this chapter)