"Cousin, this canvas is really expensive. Are you sure you can do it? If I continue to waste it, my mother will definitely beat a prodigal like me to death!"
"Just tell me if you want to sell your paintings?"
In the Rong family's studio, Zhang Xuezhou and Rong Tianding were muttering for a while.
Rong Tianding looked embarrassed, but also a little moved.
His paintings were disdainful to wealthy families and unaffordable to small families.
It's not that the price of Rong Tianding's paintings is high, it's that the cost of Rong Tianding's paintings is there. He can't sell the paintings at a price that breaks his bones and vomits blood.
Let him sell his paintings cheaply. Rong Tianding keeps his cheap paintings and sells them today. Tomorrow, he will see someone washing his canvases by the river and using them to sew clothes.
And this kind of loss-making business will also be compromised by Rong Li.
This is the reason why Rong Tianding has not sold a single painting for such a long time.
If he couldn't sell his paintings, Rong Li wouldn't be able to support him to continue painting. Instead, he would have to work at the pig-killing stall.
But to do as Zhang Xuezhou did, Rong Tianding couldn't be more ruthless.
Cut the canvas, paint with pig's blood, and depict the ferocious pig-headed fairy that exorcises evil spirits...
Rong Tianding felt that everything was unreliable.
But his father, who was studying, had been planning for several years, but he never let him sell a single painting. If he didn't sell the painting, Rong Tianding felt that he would definitely inherit the pork stall and live a life of killing pigs.
"Can we..."
"If you're good at drawing other things, let's draw something else to exorcise ghosts and gods!"
"No, I'm only good at drawing pigs. I'll draw those gods with pig heads and human bodies as you say!"
Rong Tianding waved his hand, then blushed a little.
He observed the pigs carefully, but his painting skills were only average.
The reason why he is outstanding in the field of drawing pigs is simply that others do not draw pigs.
But painting a pig is indeed difficult to achieve elegance.
Rong Tianding's dream is to become a court painter who visits the royal family, but he is aware of his own abilities and knows that he may not even be able to leave Chengdu.
Unable to leave Rongcheng, he could only continue to work on this three-acre land until the way to make a living from selling paintings was completely opened.
But Rong Tianding didn't expect that his painting skills had not improved to the point where people in Chengdu were buying pictures of hundreds of pigs. Zhang Xuezhou suddenly came up with a sexy idea.
Apart from the fact that it requires an investment that will inevitably be punished if it fails, this is not a bad idea and is worth giving Rong Tianding a try.
He thought for a long time and then took an ink line to mark the cutting area on the canvas.
A piece of canvas is expensive, but it becomes cheap when cut into dozens of pieces.
But Rong Tianding has little confidence in selling the pig-headed fairy painted with pig blood.
The cost has been reduced, but whether people are willing to buy such fishy paintings and take them back is another matter.
He thought about it for a long time before he decided to cut and paint according to Zhang Xuezhou's method.
"If we paint it like this, what if people think it's a pig demon?" Rong Tianding asked worriedly.
"What pig demon? This is the pig god who restrains ghosts and evil spirits," Zhang Xuezhou corrected.
"I really can't see that this is a god!"
Rong Tianding looked at the pig-blood monster in his painting and felt that it looked ugly no matter how ugly it looked. Anyone who bought such a thing would have a brain disease.
"Cousin, I think you don't understand painting at all," Rong Tianding said sadly.
"Cousin, you don't understand the market!"
Zhang Xuezhou waved his hand.
Although Zhang Weimeng failed in business, Zhang Xuezhou knew some basic factors of sales due to his exposure to Zhang Weimeng's theories.
Buying and selling will occur only when there is demand.
Rong Tianding practiced painting for another ten years, and his level of painting pigs improved by another ten steps. However, the people did not have the demand to buy the picture of a hundred pigs. It was useless no matter how high Rong Tianding's painting skills were. In the end, he could not sell a single painting.
But if there is demand, even if Rong Tianding's current painting skills are limited, Rong Tianding can sell this unqualified work.
"market?"
Rong Tianding looked confused.
He glanced at his father, who was silent behind him, and found it difficult to understand what the market was and why Zhang Xuezhou was almost certain that he could sell these paintings.
"I probably understand some of my nephew's thoughts, but Ding'er's paintings really make it hard for people to want to buy them," Jia Zhiyuan said.
Jia Zhiyuan was a scholar who entered his wife's family and was Zhang Xuezhou's cheap uncle.
Although Jia Zhiyuan is not a rich scholar, he is still well-educated and has a certain degree of thinking.
He vaguely understood Zhang Xuezhou's idea of selling these pig-headed gods based on the haunting, but Jia Zhiyuan also had corresponding questions.
"We say this is a pig-headed fairy, do others really believe that it is a pig-headed fairy?" Jia Zhiyuan asked doubtfully: "And this is just a painting smeared with pig's blood. It cannot be used to ward off evil spirits at all!"
"Li Erlang said that pig blood, chicken blood, and dog blood can ward off evil spirits. Everyone thinks so. Why can't we use pig blood to make paintings to ward off evil spirits?" Zhang Xuezhou said with a smile: "When others see this kind of painting for the first time, they will definitely not I believe it’s a fairy, but we can mark it and explain!”
"Explain?" Rong Tianding asked doubtfully: "How to explain?"
"Other people don't know what kind of god this is, so why don't we just write down the name of the god?" Zhang Xuezhou said.
"Wonderful," Rong Tianding said, "What is the name of the immortal?"
"Uncle, do you know the names of the gods in this world?" Zhang Xuezhou asked.
"I've heard that there are gods in the sacred mountains in the West. The gods established the Heavenly Court. The Lord of the Heavenly Court calls himself Emperor Haotian, and there is the Queen Mother of the West as the queen and her mother-in-law." Jia Zhiyuan thought for a few seconds before replying: "But those gods and heavenly beings The transformation into a human being is dazzling, and I have never heard of anyone who has the appearance of a pig head and a human body.”
"There are no immortals with pig heads and human bodies?" Zhang Xuezhou asked.
"Probably not. I heard those Taoists say that the gods are all handsome, and all of them are the most beautiful men and women in the world," Jia Zhiyuan replied.
"It's a little troublesome." Zhang Xuezhou nodded and said, "But it's not a big problem. Since there is no pig-headed fairy, let's make one up!"
"Editor?"
Rong Tianding and Jia Zhiyuan exited almost at the same time.
Compared with the limitations of their thinking, Zhang Xuezhou's thinking was too out-of-the-box, and he was even a bit daring, going so far as to pretend to be a god.
But the father and son stared at each other for more than ten seconds, and then surrendered.
If they could no longer make a living by reading and painting, one of them would have to continue sewing and mending clothes and doing fine work, while the other would have to kill pigs.
For their own destiny, Rong Tianding and Jia Zhiyuan had to participate in this bold decision.
"Can gods also be made up?" Rong Tianding asked in a low voice: "What if someone finds out that there is no such god?"
"How can he check?" Zhang Xuezhou waved his hand and said: "There are really big people who can check the gods. How can they embarrass us ordinary people?"
"There is Puyun Temple three miles outside the city, and there is a Mu Taoist who is good at exorcising ghosts. If our selling of pig blood fairy pictures affects his business, he will definitely come to expose us and prove that there are no such gods in the world. "Rong Tianding said.
"Then let's make it look more like it so that he can't find fault." Zhang Xuezhou said, "It's just a Taoist. We're not afraid. He can still know all the gods in the world. Besides, all gods are made up by people. Just allow others to make it up, but we are not allowed to make it up!"
Zhang Xuezhou is also a person who has experienced great storms, and has even interacted with great practitioners.
With this kind of knowledge, he didn't have much fear of a mere Taoist. He just felt that the soldiers were coming to block the water and cover him with earth, and he could just deal with it and get back.
"Then how do we make up the names of gods?"
"The name of the deity we make up should be uncommon, long, and have an official title. The official title should not be too high. Let's just say that he is a subordinate of a certain deity and specializes in the hard work of killing monsters and catching ghosts. We also need to be able to make up a rough origin and story. What big things have you done to catch ghosts..."
…
A night of painting.
The next day, Rong Tianding started to work at the stall with his panda eyes wide open.
Compared with the hard work of killing pigs, he just felt that selling paintings was great. This was what a scholar should do.
The only problem is that the paintings sold this time are a bit unfair.
He thought about his ambition to paint in the past, and then thought about his current business of selling paintings. Unknowingly, his painting career seemed to have adjusted in a direction, and he became less like those Taoists who exorcise evil spirits and cast out ghosts. the difference.
