"There lived a king on the first asteroid. This king wore a white glazed leather robe with purple-red trim and sat on a simple yet solemn throne..."
The old-fashioned gas lamp on the stone table was dancing with flames. Anna was wearing headphones, holding up a fairy tale book with yellowed pages, and reading softly.
In front of her, the sun was slowly setting over the mountainous valleys of Austria.
The high tower in the north is the highest place in the Elena family manor. Thick and strong coarse gravel strips make up this ancient building with hundreds of years of history.
It is said that before the Elena family obtained this land, it once belonged to the fiefdom of a Duke of the Holy Roman Empire.
The watchtower was built to guard against the cavalry under the Mongolian Khan. These nomads from the grasslands ran like fire and fought from Central Asia to the banks of the Danube River in history.
Guards with excellent eyesight will stand on the high tower and stare nervously at the distant horizon day and night. The first moment they see the sand and dust raised by the galloping cavalry, they will blow the warning horn. If their throats If he hasn't been pierced by the scout's sharp arrow.
As centuries passed, all the ancient traces of the Middle Ages in the manor had long been wiped away by time, and only this sturdy spire remained.
When Anna's aunt took over the manor, she did not significantly repair the monument. Her aunt only hired craftsmen to build slide rails on the stairs of the watchtower to facilitate wheelchair movement, and then gave the watchtower's key and a The book was handed over to myself.
"Saint-Exupéry said that every child needs a place away from adults to watch the sunset and stars quietly," the aunt said.
That book is "The Little Prince".
Anna is a literary girl, and "The Little Prince" has been the book that has accompanied her the most since she was a child.
The curious and kind little prince, the rose who has character flaws and is sensitive but longs to be loved, the smart and romantic fox, the vain king...
These fairy tale characters accompanied her through the lonely sunsets one after another in her childhood when she was sitting in a wheelchair.
When Detective Cat asked her to find a painting knife with fairy tale temperament, she wanted to draw a painting.
The first thing Anna thought of was the new version of "The Little Prince" that Scholastic was working on.
She knows this book so well.
The drawing knife handed over by Detective Cat is very beautiful, but it lacks soul.
Judging from the standards of an illustration, it is qualified.
Not only is it qualified, it is simply outstanding.
There is only one small flaw. It is a very beautiful illustration, but it is not an illustration that fits the look of "The Little Prince" in her mind.
Or, Anna thinks - it lacks a bit of magic that can create sales miracles.
Illustration is the painting method that art students are most exposed to and has the highest demand in the daily market.
There are tens of millions of painting and art students in the world. How many of these people will eventually become serious professional artists who are recognized by galleries and art museums and earn millions a year?
The vast majority of people have not gone into majors such as game original artists, print advertising, fashion design, and publishing illustrations. The most drawn ones are still various practical illustrations.
The lower limit of illustration is very low and the upper limit is very high.
They are all published illustrations.
What low-end illustrators do is to be "usable", while high-end illustrators hope to become "classics".
For the same set of illustrations, the works of high-end painters can bring 10%, 20% or even 30% more sales to the publishing house. Their illustrated posters hanging on the streets can make more viewers take the initiative to enter the cinema. .
The works of low-end illustrators are just bonus items for books, while the great illustrators who have won the Hans Christian Andersen Award can have well-known newspapers like the New York Review of Books write a dedicated page to report on them and increase their exposure.
This is why the value of the latter is a hundred times that of the former.
To impress the audience and create sales miracles, in addition to painting beautifully, you also need to paint with soul.
The painting of Detective Cat Lady looks like an exquisite doll.
Every facial feature is beautiful, and every curve of the body is charming.
Unfortunately, there is no temperature.
Readers will be amazed by such a work, but they may not necessarily take the initiative to pay for such a work when they have no original need to buy the book.
Really magical illustrations,
It should be possible. One dusk afternoon, a tired office worker walked past the window of the bookstore and inadvertently glanced at the beautiful new books in the window.
So, he stopped suddenly and stared at the books behind the glass for a long time. Something seemed to be touched in his heart, and then he went into the store to buy.
It starts with surprise, and love starts with heartbeat.
What Detective Cat’s paintings lack is enough empathy for readers.
Anna felt that she was a bit picky.
There are not even 10,000 illustrations in the world that can become timeless classics like "Niels Riding a Goose" and "The Wind in the Willows".
Even the Scholastic Group would not have such unrealistic expectations when requesting manuscripts.
Anna was unwilling to give in.
The painting was already so good...it was just a little bit away from being a classic. She felt that as an agent, she should be able to do something to help Detective Cat.
For classic fairy tales like "The Little Prince," there are a dazzling array of long book reviews and expert interpretations online.
But Anna didn't think that forcing the "chewed bread" of these book reviewers onto the detective cat who didn't know much about this fairy tale would have any good effect.
What the painter needs more is the feeling of suddenly moving in his heart when he hears a certain sentence.
so,
All Anna does is simply read.
She took out the book "The Little Prince" that she had grown up with from the drawer, asked the housekeeper to get the computer, sound card and wireless network card, and went to the watchtower where she often went when she was a child.
Watching the sunset setting over the distant valley, she made an appointment, and the language connection connected with the illustration artist in Africa, who softly read to her the classic passages that had left a deep impression on Anna.
…
Bah-
Gu Weijing tore off a page from the sketchbook and shook his head in disappointment.
In my ears I heard the calm and unhurried voice of Mr. Sloth. He was holding a paintbrush in his hand, and there were various scraps of paper in front of him.
Mr. Sloth seems to be taking this "literary tutoring" very seriously, and has been reading to himself for almost two hours without stopping.
But Gu Weijing still missed something here.
Mr. Sloth did not dismantle the fairy tale for himself, explaining the profound meanings and literary metaphors represented by each character's character.
His only request was that every time Gu Weijing heard a new fairy tale character appear in a passage.
All he needed to do was listen to Mr. Sloth reading and at the same time draw simple sketches of the characters in his mind, trying to capture the character traits of the fairy tale characters.
Gu Weijing worked very hard to do this.
The main plot of "The Little Prince" is not complicated.
Basically, it is a story in which the protagonist "The Little Prince" visited seven different little stars in space, and met fairy tale residents with different personalities on each star.
What Mr. Sloth just read was the passage where the little prince came to the first small planet and met the "king" there.
While listening to Mr. Sloth read, he tried to draw a line sketch of the king in his sketchbook.
The "King" in the fairy tale "The Little Prince" does not have a very complicated personality.
According to the original work, the king is the only resident on the first small planet "No. 325" that the little prince visits after leaving his own planet.
This king claims to rule over all, and his rule must be respected and brook no disobedience.
Gu Weijing once specifically checked Wikipedia.
According to the encyclopedia, this king's character is characterized by arrogance and arrogance, but also a bit of cowardice in his heart.
He is an arrogant, hypocritical and incompetent autocratic aristocrat who will be dissatisfied and complain about anything that does not suit him.
My favorite thing to do every day is to hold the calendar and issue raising and lowering orders to the sun, moon and stars.
After seeing these introductions, Gu Weijing's image of the king was probably a combination of the old Empress Dowager Cixi in old movies and a crazy astronomy enthusiast.
But there is still something missing in my paintings.
Gu Weijing just couldn't grasp how this "king" should feel.
He has deliberately painted the image of the enemy of the feudal class like the "King" according to his own imagination.
But whenever Gu Weijing was writing, he listened to the sound of Mr. Sloth reading in his ear.
There is always a sense of fragmentation.
This feeling is very similar to what he felt when he tried to draw a fusion painting for the first time last week, as if he was forcibly merging two different things together.
The last time I kneaded it was the Eastern and Western art styles.
But this time, he is trying to forcefully insert a character that does not belong to a fairy tale character into the body of the "king".
The only thing to be thankful for might be.
The soft sound of Mr. Sloth reading has a reassuring and quiet power. He encountered setbacks while painting, and disappointment was inevitable, but he did not feel too impatient and unable to continue painting.
"Ms. Detective Cat, you have a problem, right?"
Probably because he heard the frequent sound of tearing paper coming from the microphone here, Mr. Sloth finally stopped reading. The two hours of reading made his voice seem a little more hoarse.
"Well, sorry, I can't feel it."
Gu Weijing was really embarrassed.
"I tried really hard, but the characters of these characters are too complicated, like an onion, peeling off one layer and another. Wikipedia says that this guy is arrogant, but also a little cowardly at heart. .”
"I really can't grasp the scale, and the painting is very fragmented."
"Forget the encyclopedia." Mr. Sloth said suddenly.
"What?"
"Forget Wiki, forget Google Q&A, forget book review discussions on Goodreaders (foreign Douban). Forget all the character analysis you are looking for."
"Why?"
"If you want to draw moving works, you must really enter the inner world of this book. These outsiders' summaries are very good, but they are not correct." Mr. Sloth said.
"Ms. Detective Cat, what kind of character is the King in your mind?"
"Arrogant, hypocritical and incompetent nobleman?"
Gu Weijing still subconsciously answered with the character metaphors on Wikipedia.
"What kind of person do you think a noble is?" Mr. Sloth asked.
"I have no idea."
Gu Weijing shook his head. This word was too far away. He had basically only seen it in history textbooks and at the TV wedding of Prince Harry, which was broadcast live around the world.
How could he know what a noble was like.
"Well...have you read Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" or Leblond's "France"?" Mr. Sloth suddenly asked.
"No, I haven't even heard of the latter." Gu Weijing shook his head.
He had heard of "In Search of Lost Time", but he had never even heard of the name of the book that followed.
"That was the winner of the Prix Goncourt, the most important literary award at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Both books contain extensive records of the daily life of aristocrats."
"Aristocrats are actually a very boring group of people, especially some rural lords who stay away from political life in peacetime. They don't have to fight or work. Their daily life is to ride horses, hunt, attend various salons, go to the theater to watch plays, and compare actresses and The social butterfly got into her own bed." Mr. Sloth said coldly.
Oops!
Gu Weijing's eyebrows jumped wildly upon hearing this.
It's not boring anymore. My daily life is to go to various places to play, and when I'm tired of playing, I sleep with beautiful girls.
This kind of life is boring,
Do you have any conscience?
"Sounds very corrupt!" Gu Weijing sighed.
"It's very corrupt and decadent, but if you spend too many days like this, you will feel bored. It sounds arrogant, right? But hunting, horse racing, sleeping with women, and gossiping, you start from the social season in your teens, Until you are so old that you don’t even have the strength to sleep with a girl, your daily life will consist of these four things. If there are too many, you will feel bored."
"Most of the old-school nobles are not good, nor are they extremely bad. They are just tired and bored, and they don't care about anything except family honor that is higher than their lives."
Mr. Sloth said.
"In "The Red and the Black", Prince Korasov teaches the protagonist Julien how to pretend to be a nobleman, that is, never be angry and pretend to be tired all day long, because you are a great nobleman and you have ridden the fastest Ma, there is a whole troupe at home to perform for you, and you can't even count the number of beautiful women you have slept with. You have enjoyed all the best pleasures in the world, and you are not interested in anything."
"It's such a nuisance to live like this, isn't it?"
Mr. Sloth whispered, seemingly just talking to himself.
Without waiting for Gu Weijing to answer, Mr. Sloth continued.
"The author of "The Little Prince", Saint-Exupéry, was born into a wealthy family in Paris. Since the 13th century, his family had produced many French army generals. His mother came from a prominent scholarly family. Although Saint-Exupéry Perry was deeply influenced by the Enlightenment movement of equality for all, but he must have known the virtues of a true aristocrat."
"Ms. Detective Cat, have you ever wondered why the King was shaped like this?"
Mr. Sloth asked.
(End of chapter)
