After the whole family was swept away, I lay down flat

Chapter 64 Progress
The three elders, Xie Wenzai, Cao Gengyun and Lu Bainian, developed great enthusiasm for the design of glass stationery supplies.

The three of them are all excellent scholars. Not only are they good at reading and outstanding in knowledge, but they also each have some small talents that they are good at - even if they were not good at it originally, they have become good at it in the past 30 years of exile.Compared with skills that require a lot of tools, calligraphy and painting are more suitable for people in areas with relatively poor resources. They only need paper and pens to entertain themselves for a long time.

Therefore, all three of them are very good at painting, but their preferences are slightly different.However, if you want to draw or engrave patterns on glassware, it is better to use flowers and landscapes with simple lines. As for poems and famous lines, you have to ask the craftsmen first to know whether they can be used.

However, if they really want to design study utensils, the three elders all feel that they have a lot of experience.They have all lived in prosperous big cities such as Beijing or Jiangnan for many years. They have been in contact with various wealthy and leisurely literati and elegant guests, and they know what kind of stationery supplies they like.Even if the three of them know about fashion from many years ago, the word "elegance" trumps everything else.For a scholar with taste and cultivation, there is no need to pursue any fashionable style for daily necessities, as long as they suit your heart, it will be the best.

Cao and Lu dug out their own pens, inks, paper and inkstones. Xie Wenzai went back to his room to get a full set of study and painting tools and paints. The three of them gathered around the kang table and began to draw their favorite styles of study supplies.Xie Wenzai is quite familiar with the glass firing technology. When designing patterns, he can adapt to the craftsmanship and will not design anything particularly fancy and difficult to burn. Cao Lu and Cao Lu have never been to a glass workshop and only know that glass is made from the kiln. It was made out of glass, and I guessed it was similar to porcelain, so I designed the style of the glassware according to the pattern of porcelain.

As for whether it can be put into practical use after it is designed, that is a matter for the future.At least, the three elders are all having fun painting now.

The child Haitang was quickly sent out of the house.However, Lu Bainian was very happy that she reminded them that glass could be burned into stationery supplies. Before sending her away, he remembered to ask her kindly what she was doing here.Haitang told her about borrowing patterns, and Lu Bainian readily agreed, then stuffed her with a pamphlet: "This is more suitable for making patterns than the herb diagram."

Haitang flipped through the booklet in the yard and was surprised to find that it looked a bit like a textbook for beginners to draw various flower patterns.

There are one or two flowers drawn on each page, starting from the simple flower shape at the beginning to the gorgeous peonies on the last page, gradually.Around the flower in the middle, a circle of small pictures were drawn on the surrounding blank paper in the order in which the pen was drawn, clearly showing how a flower is drawn and formed from scratch.There are simple white drawings at the beginning, and simple coloring has been added to the end of the second half. Even the order of coloring is clearly marked.

With such a booklet, even people who have no painting foundation and no teacher to teach them, as long as their hands are not too clumsy, can learn the basic painting skills of various flower patterns, right?

Don't use this booklet as a painting teaching material, just use it as a pattern.The flowers that Grandpa Lu painted were very lively, much better than the rigid patterns that Grandma Ma gave Begonia to practice.

Haitang was not a real child, and had seriously studied painting in her previous life. How could she not see how carefully Lu Bainian had drawn this booklet?I have never heard that my brother Hai Jiao has any plans to learn painting, so is Lu Bainian's intention just for her as an auditor?
Haitang took the pamphlet to return to her grandmother Ma.Ma flipped through the brochure and thought Lu Bainian's paintings were good: "Well, I just mentioned to him that you are getting older and should learn some poetry, calligraphy and painting, and you still look like a lady, even if If you’re not good at painting, you can at least draw some patterns. I didn’t expect him to actually get you a pattern book. Let’s use this to practice embroidery tomorrow! He looks pretty good at painting.”

Haitang laughed twice, took the pamphlet and went back to the house.She should use this booklet to "learn" painting skills, embroidery and other things, which she will talk about later.

Next, she began to "learn" these basic line drawing techniques of flowers at a rate of one page in two days.

First, cover the copy with tissue paper. After you finish drawing a whole piece of paper, you can switch to ordinary paper and compare it with the original painting.Once the reproduction becomes familiar, put aside the original painting and start over again based on memory.If the painting goes well, you can make slight modifications according to your own ideas, such as adding or subtracting one or two petals, adding two stamens, or slightly changing the shape of the flower, etc.

Haitang has a good foundation in painting, but she learned painting from the concubine in the palace. Every day depends on the concubine's interest, so she can't decide what kind of learning progress is normal. I can refer to the two white-eyed wolf students I taught in my previous life, and I feel that a flower picture every two days should not arouse any suspicion.Anyway, Lu Bainian's booklet shows the shape and drawing order of each flower very clearly. She is copying cats and drawing tigers, so is it strange that she can't draw them?By the time she had "learned" the painting method of line drawing of flowers in most of the books, saving the drawings that required coloring techniques and preparing to ask teacher Lu Bainian for advice, the first snow in Suzhou had already fallen.

It snowed heavily, and a thick layer of snow accumulated in the yard overnight.Hai Changan got up early in the morning, took his housekeeper and servants to shovel the snow on the roof and ground, and then ran to help the Wang family clear the snow.

Wang Chengfu was ordered to escort several food craftsmen to Ganzhou a few days ago. He also escorted a batch of corn harvested in Suzhou to let the people of Dusi have a taste of the new grain.If Ganzhou wants to try planting, they can directly use these new grains as seeds, so there is no need for Dusi to go to the trouble of collecting grain seeds.

Before Wang Chengfu left, because he was worried about his beloved wife and young son at home, he asked the Hai family to help take care of them.Even though he was so attentive, there were still palm-shaped red marks on his face when he set out, and there were scratches on his neck. Although they were not deep, everyone who saw them couldn't help but speculate.He tried hard to pretend that nothing happened, but he couldn't hide the increasingly obvious blush on his face.

It's snowing, and people from the Hai family who have to go to the Yamen still have to go to work, but the horse riding practice has stopped.Ma strictly forbids her children to go out riding horses in such weather for fear that they might fall.As for the skills of riding horses in the snow...it's not too late to learn them in a few years.If Hai Jiao and Hai Tang hadn't insisted, she wouldn't have even wanted them to practice archery and sword practice in the winter.

Haitang huddled in her room, enjoying the warmth of the small kang while embroidering the gifts she prepared for her family. While "studying painting", she also did not forget her embroidery homework. After two attempts to remove the stitches and re-embroider, she finally completed her grandmother Ma's red plum forehead wiping, proving that her embroidery skills have greatly improved. , the forehead wiping is also done decently, but the stitches are not good-looking.

Then she made a felt hat for her grandfather Hai Xiya. The stitching was specially made to be slightly thicker and crooked, but it was completely black and could not be seen without looking closely.

When making a felt hat for her second uncle Hai Changan, her craftsmanship had obviously "progressed" and the stitches were much neater.

The felt hat I made for my brother Hai Jiao is of the best workmanship and the stitching is neat and detailed.Not to mention how happy Hai Jiao was when she got the hat.

Grandfather Hai Xiya couldn't help but feel a little sour, and complained to his wife privately: "Why is it that the hat Tangtang made for me is the worst?"

Ma rolled her eyes at him: "Then why do you still go out wearing that hat every day? The child is getting better and better. At worst, I might ask her to make another one for you!"

Hai Xiya grinned: "Well, what kind of needlework do you do in the cold weather? It's the first hat my granddaughter made, and it looks good on me."

(End of this chapter)