Almighty painter

Chapter 652 Painting Model
『Time: Afternoon of June 2023.6.25, 』

"Time remaining until departure of flight to Singapore: +128 hours, 18 minutes and 36 seconds"
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Katsuko Sakai may not be a heavyweight painter, but her father definitely is.

Now I have passed the audition.

It saves the step of submitting works to the organizing committee, and any latest developments and requirements can be discussed and coordinated through the curatorial assistant.

For someone like Gu Weijing, who comes from a small place, he always looks at international biennials with a sense of awe.

Distance produces beauty.

In the environment where Gu Weijing grew up, exhibitions like the Lion City Biennale were always shrouded in a hazy aura, which was both fashionable, solemn and mysterious.

So when preparing for the exhibition, he seemed uncomfortably unsure. He kept painting the same work over and over again, always worrying that his preparations were not good enough.

Katsuko Sakai is much more at ease.

She grew up in a similar environment.

I have never eaten pork, but I have always seen my father running.

I have been to various biennials countless times.

She had seen countless times how Uncle Sakai rolled around in various exhibitions like a rampaging giant pig.

The curator often has to applaud and shout "666", "Master Sakai is awesome", or even run after his dad and roll with him.

and so.

Having seen so many similar situations, Shengzi has already deconstructed and demystified them.

What a high-end art exhibition! To put it bluntly, it is just a chasing game in which a group of scholars, based on their own subjective preferences, hope to catch the invisible bird of "art" with the tangible net of "awards".

The essence of curators and professional judges is no different from a group of children standing on the grass, craning their necks, standing on tiptoe and staring at the sky.

The phoenix swims on the phoenix platform.

Without the divine bird, no matter how high the cost of holding an exhibition is, no matter how overwhelming the publicity and promotion efforts are, no matter how grand and solemn the exhibition stand is, they will all lose their original meaning.

Only a group of judges were left standing on the stage, staring blankly at the surging river beside them.

And if you draw well enough.

The moment the phoenix makes its first cry, someone will jump on his horse and run after it, from sunrise to sunset, from south of the Cangshan Mountain to north of the Yangtze River.

Even if you can't catch it.

Looking up and watching it like a burning flame, piercing through the sky and illuminating everything, is also a kind of spiritual richness and happiness.

Katsuko Sakai told Gu Weijing at the beginning.

Don't take one or two paintings too seriously.

A painter's life will not be defined by one or two paintings, nor even by the success or failure of one or two exhibitions, but only by his own heart.

When your heart tells you that you are ready, then don't hesitate, don't get tangled up, just paint unswervingly. If you find that you have already submitted the draft to the organizing committee, then at most you will just have to submit another one.

A bird catcher would not refuse a phoenix from landing just because the grass is already covered with sparrows.

To put it more darkly, it was difficult for curator Mika Tonks to refuse such a "trivial" request from Kazunari Sakai's daughter to submit one more drawing.

not to mention.

This picture of "Quiet, Empty, and Mysterious" may not be called a phoenix, but at least it is a rare parrot with green feathers, a golden crown, and pink eyes.

The phoenix is ​​a divine bird that only exists in heaven. It is hard to come by and may appear only once in a hundred years. For the remaining 99 years, its image can only be passed on by word of mouth through the chants of poets.

In an art exhibition in the human world, a beautiful parrot is carefully packaged and dressed up, and maybe it can also cosplay as half a phoenix.

Gu Weijing felt.

Also an Impressionist work, this painting is even better than Katsuko's previous painting "Girl Reading Poetry to a Cat".

The brushwork is more skillful and the color contrast is bolder.

The key is that the characters' expressions are also more profound.

The beauty of "Girl Reading Poems to Cats" is reflected in the warmth of the work, and the warmth of the work is mainly reflected in Katsuko's portrayal of the sunlight.

The sunlight feels like smooth soft forge.

As for the subject of the painting, the little girl Jasmine who reads Shelley's poems to Awang... well, it's not that the characters are poorly portrayed, but that they are an obvious weakness in the painting. It's that on the canvas of "Girl Reading Poems to Cats", although they are the subject of the painting, they don't stand out.

They blend completely into the sunlight, trees and vines in the background.

in other words.

Its existence is to serve the background of the picture and the overall temperament of the picture.

In the painting “Quiet, Empty, and Mysterious,” most of the picture is occupied by the dark green forest, followed by the lake.

The characters only occupy a very small part of the picture, and are just a glimpse of the beautiful scenery between the lake and mountains.

In terms of color composition, she is a small flesh-red embellishment between the green forest, blue lake and golden sunlight.

But even with just this glimpse, this small flesh-red embellishment completely dominates the temperament of the picture.

She is the "collection" of the atmosphere of the whole picture. The temperament of the whole picture is purely for the figure by the pond.

The girl sitting on the branch absorbed the colors of the surrounding forest and the beauty of the lake water.

If a painting is a wild fruit, the character is the core of the painting, the only "solid" existence in the work. The purpose of the surrounding flesh is to allow it to grow freely.

Katsuko Sakai came up with the idea of ​​painting another work when she was meditating and "observing" Koko that day.

The model in the picture——

"…Her acting is terrible, isn't it? Some people can star in Netflix's new drama just because they are good-looking, but she even has a big round face like a plate. How can someone with a big round face like a plate and who is lazy when reciting lines be the leading actress in the drama?"

A few meters away from the window, the girl was sitting on the table, pulling Awang's fat face.

She stared at the cat in her arms and asked, "If this wasn't related to the casting director, I wouldn't believe it."

King Awang, who had no choice but to go to work to serve customers, raised his big round face that was as big as a plate and meowed lazily in response.

I don't know whether it is expressing agreement or opposition.

Gu Weijing was busy completing his second painting for the exhibition as a detective cat.

Katsuko Sakai has also been busy these days completing her second painting for the exhibition.

Koko is her model.

Although Koko said she could really sit on the branch.

Climbing trees is a piece of cake for her.

Shengzi still felt it was a bit dangerous, so he moved a table to the window of the studio and asked Koko to sit barefoot on the table to simulate the feeling of sitting on a tree branch with the sunlight shining on her face.

It seems that art models just need to stay there and not move. They don't need to constantly change angles and locations like photography models. At the end of the day, their faces will be sore from smiling. In fact.

Art modeling is a very hard industry.

Photographic models only need to adjust their poses for a moment, while art models have to pose for hours in the studio. If you are a nude model in winter, the cold is more unbearable than the shame. Even if there is a heater, it is not very useful. Usually the side facing the hot fan is hot and sweaty, and the side facing away from the heater is very cold, just like a grilled squid with only one side grilled.

By the way.

A little trivia.

Any art student who studies oil painting, watercolor, or sketching will almost certainly come across drawing naked models in body shape classes, but the scenes are usually not erotic at all.

High-end studios and high-end painters naturally have all kinds of models they want to paint.

But for ordinary people and models that small studios can access.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, naked models were usually body workers, but nowadays, most of the nude models hired by art academy studios are retired uncles and aunts.

The so-called "young models" generally refer to those who are 45 or 50 years old, young in the sense that they are not yet at retirement age.

If a model is only 35 years old, then he or she may be the youngest model in an academy. And sometimes, models have to do some special poses that require tense muscles, which is even more tiring.

Of course, Koko is an ordinary model, which is not difficult.

but.

She has tried very hard to be a good model, but it is still very hard.

Koko doesn't feel tired.

She just couldn't sit still.

A girl as energetic as Koko will definitely yawn out of boredom if you ask her to sit still and act like a sculpture for several hours.

Katsuko Sakai saw this.

She brought a camera with her.

Before starting to draft, Shengzi would ask Koko to sit at the table and pose in exactly the same posture as the forest princess in the picture, and then she would take a group of photos at different angles and under different lighting conditions.

Remaining time.

Shengzi didn't have such high requirements for Koko's body posture. She just needed to sit on the table with her back straight. She could do whatever she wanted. Shengzi only needed her to provide a rough three-dimensional figure in front of him as a spatial reference.

Only when Ms. Sakai is unsure about the lines or light and shadow will she let Koko follow her instructions and pose in a specific shape.

Koko likes to hold Awang in her arms and watch TV series together on their phones.

As a girl who has been practicing dance since childhood, Koko has strong core strength.

She can hold a big fat man like Awang who weighs more than 20 kilograms without any unnecessary compensatory force on the muscles of her back. Her waist and back are naturally relaxed without any bend, her hip line is upward, and her lumbar spine and lower abdomen are tight, showing off her graceful and slender curves.

Sitting slender and straight.

just.

When she watched the drama, she liked to roll her eyes and mutter some complaints that Gu Weijing could not understand at all.

Koko was worried whether this would affect Miss Shengzi's concentration when painting, but Shengzi said it didn't matter, she liked her model to have that relaxed and natural feeling in the studio.

"New Look and Hurt Collar, which one is better?"

Koko put her phone on the table, pulled her shoulders, suddenly turned her head, looked over, and asked casually.

"What and what?"

Gu Weijing didn’t quite understand. He knew every word in the other party’s words, but when they were put together, he didn’t recognize him.

Meow, meow, meow, meow.

He stared at Miss Koko in confusion, and in his heart he made the same confused cat-like sound as Awang.

Koko glanced at him and didn't answer.

"For you, let's go with the New Look. The New Look suits you better."

A voice answered from beside me, and it was Katsuko Sakai who answered casually with the tip of her brush touching the palette like a dragonfly skimming the water.

Gu Weijing then realized how he had been being too sentimental.

I'm talking to Miss Sakai.

"Right... the Hermès collar is more suitable for round faces, I think so too." Koko nodded. "The overall shape of the new look will be-"

"It will be more feminine."

Katsuko Sakai interface.

Gu Weijing looked at Koukou, then at Miss Sakai, as if he was hearing something mysterious.

The way this world opens seems to be wrong.

He always thought that he would be the only intersection in Shengzi and Koko's lives.

Shouldn't Sakai Katsuko's life be the same as hers, filled with professional painting issues such as color temperature, hue, color mixing, and brushwork? Shouldn't she be as oblivious to the gossip that Koko tells her as she is to herself?

How could she insert herself into Koko's topic so easily?

“‘New Look’ refers to the ‘new design’ or ‘new look’ movement, which was a design concept for women’s clothing proposed by fashion designer Christian Dior in 1947.”

Katsuko Sakai probably guessed Gu Weijing's confusion, and explained while drawing, "A stable clothing shape, inspired by men's windbreaker jackets. This stable structure of clothing allows girls to show off their S-shaped curves without wearing a corset."

"As for the Helt Territory——"

"That is another completely different off-the-shoulder neckline style, similar to the New Look but not exactly the same. The former is an X-shaped shape for the entire garment, while the Herté collar is an X-shaped neckline with both shoulders hollowed out or exposed, showing the shoulder bones together, but the collar is very high in the middle, even giving the effect of a turtleneck sweater."

Katsuko Sakai looked up at her model and said, "The off-the-shoulder dress I gave to Koko is designed in the style of the New Look. I think this can dilute the concept of clothes and show the color in line with the curves of the body."

Katsuko Sakai originally proposed that Koko would be paid $100 as a "reward" if she served as a model for one day.

This number is set very considerately.

Shengzi knew that Koko needed money, but he didn't want to give her alms that seemed condescending.

100 US dollars is certainly not a small amount of money in Yangon, but it is definitely not very high in the industry.

If it were in a place like New York or Paris, with Coco's looks and her age, she might be able to get a contract for a print modeling job.

Even if you are a complete amateur, you should be able to get a starting work price of $25 per hour.

But Koko insisted on not accepting it, saying that this was the reward for Shengzi's guidance on her portfolio.

finally.

Shengzi didn't force it, but when she was her painting model, the skirt she wore was like a gift she bought for Koko.

(End of this chapter)