"Actually... you can find out useful tips for painting this kind of painting. How about I teach you two strokes?"
Gu Weijing always knew that his grandfather was deeply impressed by the failure to imitate Castiglione's paintings, so he asked tentatively.
Teach me two strokes?
When Gu Tongxiang heard his grandson's serious tone, the corner of his mouth twitched and he didn't know how to answer.
Okay, what I just said was in vain.
The old man was a little moved and a little angry.
After all, the grandson he brought up since childhood still cares about him.
The old man also admitted that during this period, Gu Weijing's painting skills improved by leaps and bounds, and he often made amazing moves.
However, when he heard that the other party said that he wanted to teach him to draw, Gu Tongxiang, a strict teacher-oriented Oriental parent, was still quite unconvinced.
"Why, with a famous teacher like Professor Lin, I don't think much of your grandfather anymore. Teach me... hmph, you can wait until you graduate from college to say this."
Mr. Gu Tongxiang couldn't help but feel a sense of pride in his heart.
Masters like Lin Tao are certainly awesome, but old man, I am also one of the best Chinese painting masters in this three-acre land of Myanmar, okay!
When going to attend an art seminar or something, who can't respectfully call out "Teacher Gu"?
"Come on, come on, if you want to say that, then don't blame me for attacking you. Grandpa really wants to criticize you for the problems in your painting."
The old man muttered: "Painters are afraid that they don't have self-awareness and can't even discover their own problems. That's really screwed up. Although your grandfather and I can't imitate Castiglione, we have walked this road after all. I tell you how to paint difficult things, but I can point you where. If you draw it wrong, you just pick it up at random.”
Only one lamp on the table was turned on at night, and the light was a bit dim for older people to appreciate the art.
Mr. Gu didn't care at all. This was not an antique appraisal.
New body painting attaches great importance to the overall look and feel, and often allows the audience to look at the painting, which belongs to the type of good or bad at first glance.
He was confident that he could find the problem with a casual scan and a few seconds of cursory viewing.
Mr. Gu bent down and looked at the rice paper on the desk.
Then, he saw a lifelike bean flower.
Um?
It seems okay.
"The style is fragmented, the writing is rough, neither correct nor foreign..." The old man's sarcastic words had already slipped into his throat, and he was forced back.
Mr. Gu rubbed his eyes.
He turned the side table lamp to its brightest setting and even turned on the overhead lighting spotlights in the gallery.
Gu Tongxiang's eyes twitched.
My first impression was correct.
The lines are natural and the brushwork is harmonious, which gave him a good subjective impression.
"This painting... please wait for me, I want to take a closer look."
After watching it for a few seconds, Gu Tongxiang's heart skipped a beat.
He took a deep breath, then almost trotted all the way, rushing up the stairs with an agility that was not suitable for his age.
The old man found his reading glasses on the bedside of the bedroom, and then ran back panting, leaning over the painting, his forehead almost touching the paper in his eagerness.
this time,
Gu Tongxiang really saw it clearly.
That's right,
What is on the rice paper is indeed a beautiful bean flower that has just been painted. The leaves are emerald green, the flowers are purple-red, and the colors are as fresh as if they were stained with dew.
The overall impression is not bad, but the details are handled better.
Gu Tongxiang grew up in an atmosphere where his elders painted Chinese paintings.
Although he also practices Western oil painting, he is obviously closer to Chinese painting and his appreciation level is higher than that of Western oil painting.
The details of my grandson's colored pencil drawing of "Classic Mercedes-Benz Car" are perfect.
It was so perfect that it looked like it was drawn by a robot. Gu Tongxiang not only couldn't fault it, he even couldn't understand how good it was.
However, this painting
Gu Tongxiang can understand it completely.
Dewei does not teach Chinese painting. Gu Weijing's method of holding and using the Chinese painting brush was taught step by step by his father since he was a child.
Therefore, the old man can even see some cordial feelings in Gu Weijing's writing style.
Just because I can understand,
Gu Tongxiang felt that his world view had been impacted even more.
"Hey! My grandson's proficiency in using brushes has improved very quickly in the past two months. He is not much worse than me."
"Huh? It's so beautiful that it can be painted like this here... Wait, let's talk about it, how was this painted?"
"Damn, this was painted by my grandson?"
The old man was a little messy, rubbing his hands on his chin.
"This even looks better than the original work." He murmured something, and made a comment that came from his feelings, but it was a comment that he didn't even dare to believe when he said it.
The original work that Mr. Gu Tongxiang mentioned was naturally not referring to the original painting by Castiglione in the Forbidden City of Eastern Xia Dynasty, but to the imitation in his shop next door.
That's what paintings are like,
There is only one most shocking treasure. The imitations produced by the printing press can only try their best to restore the original but cannot surpass it.
This 1:1 "Bean Blossom Picture", because it is an imitation of silk, seems to be only on par with the work that my grandson just finished, and it does not have the layering of this hand-painted work on paper. .
The old man knows the difficulty of Lang Shining's works.
Since imitations are difficult to draw.
Someone so powerful can only be a painter.
Gu Tongxiang was so shocked that the hairs on his body stood on end.
"My grandson is really... awesome."
The old man kept a straight face, forced down the surprise in his heart, and tried his best to maintain the dignity of his elders.
"The painting is indeed good, eh, but you can't be complacent. You still need to practice more."
Gu Tongxiang was used to criticizing, and as he spoke, the corners of his mouth opened involuntarily.
good?
More than good.
If the painter hadn't been his grandson, the old man would have pounced on it and started licking it right now.
If an adult painter wants to learn techniques, it is most basic to be able to flatter him.
Whether it's talent or luck, the techniques mastered by painters are all precious.
It is similar to adding salt to watercolor painting paper to create snowflake patterns, or adding sawdust to oil painting thinner to create a grainy texture on the skin. This method that everyone knows now, if we go back a hundred or two hundred years, that is The secret recipe of the painting school that cannot be exchanged for a lot of money.
The Italian painter relied on this skill to become the Pope's royal painter.
Especially the tips for using brushes in this new type of painting,
When painters are painting, they will guard against outsiders like thieves. In the old society, if you were caught stealing from someone's master, the government would not care if you were beaten to death.
If you just lick your face and flatter me, you can learn new techniques and wake up from your dreams with a smile.
Didn't you see that the middle-aged and elderly painters who are already known as well-known artists are still obediently flattering in front of Mr. Cao, don't they all want Mr. Cao to give some advice?
Of course, in the circle of calligraphy and painting,
The one with the strongest licking skills is definitely the agent, this is their profession.
Especially when a small agent meets a big painter whose original contract is about to expire, that is called flattery.
The old man looked at the painting, then at his grandson, then at the painting, then at his grandson. After repeating it several times, he finally couldn't help but giggled twice: "If you can really imitate Castiglione, these paintings will be placed before us. Isn’t it really going to be sold out in my gallery at home?”
Gu Tongxiang's mind could already picture the golden retriever tourists coming down the Yangon River, waving U.S. dollars and Euros OMG in their hands.
"I guess someone will come to me to draw a custom painting." Gu Weijing thought for a while.
Serious painters don’t like to make custom paintings, so that’s what great artists are talking about.
Ordinary small and medium-sized painters have no choice.
Painting portraits for employers, New Year pictures, and birthday paintings with specific themes are all one of the main sources of income for Gu's Book Gallery.
When encountering generous foreign embassy counselors, military attachés, etc., a custom painting can even be sold for three to four thousand dollars, which is enough to cover the entire month's sales.
"No, it can't be like this."
Mr. Gu Tongxiang shook his head again.
He stroked the rice paper at his hand and took the initiative to deny the thought that had just arisen in him: "Forget it, it's better not to show it out. You can just paint properly now. The stage for selling your paintings should not be in this small shop. Our family is not in a hurry to make money from the book gallery."
The stage in Yangon is just too small.
Painting is another abnormal profession.
If unknown low-level painters want to make a living, they have to sell a lot of paintings. Selling a lot of paintings will make your works even less expensive.
This is the death cycle of low-level painters.
If you have already sold two thousand cheap oil paintings on the market, sorry, even if the capital group wants to push you, it will be difficult to push it.
It is also for this reason that unless illustrators can break through the circle with the help of modern media, they will fall into the lower reaches of the contempt chain in the painting industry.
Before,
Customized paintings costing thousands of dollars each might excite the old man.
But now, especially after meeting Master Cao Xuan, many things that Mr. Gu never dared to think about before are now dared to dream about.
He doesn't want to delay his grandson's future just to make quick money now.
Longyou shoal is difficult to display,
The stage for Gu Weijing's debut should not be this small calligraphy and painting shop passed down from his ancestors.
Thinking of this,
"By the way, I originally wanted to wait another two years, but since you keep up the good work..."
Gu Tongxiang suddenly pondered for a moment, and seemed to have made up his mind and said, "Maybe it's time to hand some things into your hands now."
Gu Weijing saw his grandpa go to the safe next to the counter, enter the password, and open the metal cabinet door of the safe.
The old man ignored the cash in dollars and euros placed outside, but carefully took out a mahogany rectangular box from the innermost layer of the safe.
The box looks very old, flat in shape, and has some traces of moth damage in some places, but overall it is solid and complete.
The mahogany box is hollowed out with an autumn scene of full moon and golden osmanthus, and a couplet of poems is filled in with mottled gold powder——
[There are infinite painting hands in the world, but they can still bring about autumn when the weather is cold. 】
This is a spliced poem.
The so-called splicing poetry is a pastime used by literati in the Eastern Xia Dynasty.
It is composed of two parts, one from the other, from the Tang Dynasty Gao Zhan's "There are infinite paintings in the world, and a sad picture cannot be painted" and Liu Yuxi's famous line "If it falls into the hands of an ordinary painter, autumn can still come from the cold weather."
When put together in this way, the rhyme remains unchanged.
But he changed "cannot paint" to "can paint", and changed "ordinary painter's hand" to "infinite painter's hand", which is very elegant and complacent for painters.
"You come and take it."
The old man stared at the mahogany box for a few seconds, and then handed over the wooden box in his hand.
The moment he saw the box, Gu Weijing's expression suddenly became serious.
He didn't dare to be careless, and rubbed his hands vigorously on his clothes before carefully taking the mahogany box from his grandfather's hands and placing it respectfully on the table.
Gu Weijing knew what it was.
When my ancestors came to Myanmar from the Eastern Xia Dynasty, they only inherited ten small yellow croakers made of one tael of gold and a mahogany painting box.
The little yellow croaker helped their family survive numerous turmoils and famines.
The last few small yellow croakers were sold by the old man as start-up capital when he was working on ancient paintings in the 1990s. Gu Weijing's generation never had the opportunity to see them, but this mahogany painting box was passed down from generation to generation.
"Grandpa, why did you take it out? You couldn't do it." Gu Weijing bit his lip.
The mahogany box contains the seals and brushes of the ancestors.
Rather than treating it as a valuable antique Chinese painting utensil, this family-herited painting box has become a kind of emotional sustenance for Gu's ancestors.
It has been carefully stored in the safe. It is only used every year when worshiping ancestors. When I take it out, I can't wait to kowtow and bow nine times.
If he bumped into it, the old man would go crazy.
"It's time. My father passed away early. Your current level is much higher than when I took over this painting box from my father."
Gu Tongxiang smiled. He took out a dry towel from the safe and gently wiped the spotless surface of the mahogany painting box again.
Then he gently opened the small lock on the top of the painting box, revealing the true appearance inside.
The painting box is divided into two layers. The upper layer contains three suet seals and a brass seal, and the lower layer contains five paintbrushes from small to large.
Gu Weijing once heard his grandfather talk about the origin of the things here.
The brass seal is an official talisman, issued by the Palace Painting Academy, with the word "First Class" written on it, which is the highest honor for the court painters of the Qing Dynasty.
My ancestors were only third-class painters.
However, because I was selected as an envoy to the Konbaung Dynasty in Myanmar, the sky is high and the road is far away. Mosquitoes and flies plague, peach blossom miasma, and pig dragons (crocodiles) may lead to my death before I reach Myanmar.
So he was promoted two levels in a row and was mentioned as a first-class painter, enjoying seventh-level food and salary.
The three mutton-fat seals of different sizes are the private seals of the ancestors. They are respectively engraved with the family motto of "diligence and self-reliance", the symbol of "Master Gu", and the career expectations of "writing with spirit".
As for the five brushes, they are Wu Di bamboo carving brushes produced in Jiangsu. The five brushes cover the complete set of tools for painting traditional Chinese paintings.
Antique paintbrushes can be expensive or cheap, depending on the time and place of production.
The market price of bamboo carving brushes from the Republic of China is about US$500. If it is a well-preserved bamboo brush from the Wanli or Ming Dynasty from the Jiajing period, the auction price of each one will be US$60,000 to US$80,000.
This set of five paintbrushes, some new and some old, although it does not date back to the Ming Dynasty, the latest one is 150 years old.
The five pens here alone are definitely not cheaper than the German master set that Lao Yang gave him, and the meaning is completely different.
(End of chapter)
