The Versatile Master Artist

Chapter 187 - 120: Painting Knife Painting—Testing the Waters with the Painting Knife (Part 2)

But those representative figures of the aesthetic movement, whether Edward Jones or James Whistler, loved to extensively use the painting knife in their painting process.

James Whistler, a national treasure-level great painter of the United States, is even considered one of the founders of the painting knife technique.

Gu Weijing really liked this contract.

Not only does the other party’s requirements completely fall within his legendary painting knife technique, moreover, this draft invitation comes from the youth publishing giant, the Scholastic Group.

Such a large-scale publishing group is almost the favorite collaboration partner for illustrators.

Negative issues like long payment cycles, low sales shares, and lack of book marketing channels with small regular publishers don’t exist at all with Scholastic.

Not only are the terms favorable, but selling just one more book acts as a silent advertisement for the illustrator each time.

Gu Weijing felt like he was hit by a pie falling from the sky in surprise.

He pondered for a moment but didn’t immediately rush into drawing; instead, he bought an old edition of "The Little Prince" on Amazon and quickly flipped through it from start to finish.

The task of illustrating "The Little Prince" itself doesn’t set a high standard for illustrators.

Gu Weijing didn’t need to have any extra creativity of his own.

Because when Saint-Exupéry created this book, he had already drawn over a hundred illustrations for it, even achieving the extent of each page having a unique illustration.

Many past classic versions of "The Little Prince" used the author’s own doodles as illustrations.

After much deliberation, the Scholastic Group finally decided to update the illustrations by the original author.

This decision had a bit of a begrudging element.

The main reason is that Saint-Exupéry himself was not a professional painter, and these illustrations are quite ordinary, some are merely amateur sketches.

But more importantly, they couldn’t acquire the copyright for the original illustrations of "The Little Prince".

This is quite an awkward situation.

Scholastic’s main competitor in North America, the original copyright holding company for "The Little Prince," Townesman Publishing Group, successfully employed legally complex maneuvers and lobbying activities to register the illustrations of "The Little Prince" as independently separate "cartoon characters" from the text in the United States.

And in North America, the copyright protection period for cartoon illustrations is 95 years after the author’s death.

To put it more plainly,

even though the text of "The Little Prince" has entered the public domain, its original illustrations are still in the competitor’s hands, making them unusable by Scholastic.

They either had to commission new illustrators,

or they could only publish the text without illustrations.

There was no third option.

In the publishing industry, using classic, well-known illustrations as a copyright moat is one of the common practices of publishing companies.

Apart from "The Little Prince," series of illustrations created by master illustrator Shepherd for the novel "The Wind in the Willows" are treated similarly.

Even if non-competing Asian publishing companies want to introduce them to their domestic markets, the copyright quotes for the illustrations themselves are much higher than for the novel texts.

Nonetheless,

in the draft requirements, Scholastic also requested that the painter use the original illustration tone of Saint-Exupéry as a model.

However, on the other hand,

this lightened Gu Weijing’s creative burden. With the original overall design by Saint-Exupéry, he just needed to create his paintings on this model.

Gu Weijing carefully scanned over the original illustrations of "The Little Prince," occasionally using an identification skill.

From a professional artistic perspective, these illustrations are not outstanding, but they remain the versions most closely linked to the text by the original author.

After browsing through them from start to finish, Gu Weijing had an idea of the basic composition.

He turned off the computer, came to the easel, stretched the canvas, mixed some paints with a painting knife, and gently drew the first twisted curve on the canvas.

Within just a few seconds,

a single-layered rose-colored petal bloomed on the canvas, followed by a second, a third, and greenery and grass began to spread around them, along with the uneven ground...

If a bystander were watching Gu Weijing paint at this moment, they would surely be astonished with their mouth agape.

It was incredibly fast!

Like some sort of magic,

Within a few short minutes, a rough outline of a flowering bush had already appeared on the canvas.

Gu Weijing’s actions showed no sign of hesitation, smooth and flowing.

He didn’t even need any extra mixing; with a gentle flick and smear, the painting knife mixed the paint together like thick cream on the palette, then he applied it to the canvas.

The challenge of painting knife painting lies in control, as even the smallest pear-shaped painting knife has a contact surface with the canvas that is several times that of a regular brush when applying paint.

Controlling the painting knife is a profound knowledge; it requires not just technique but also feeling.

When applying paint with a painting knife, there’s no room for adjustment,

if your hand trembles or you hesitate when "applying the knife," the paint will show wave-like ripples under uneven pressure.

It’s all about being clean and decisive.

If someone looks like they’re hesitating like an old lady crossing the road while using a painting knife, timid and unsure, then the final effect of the painting will definitely be less than satisfactory.

Almost every master skilled in the painting knife technique paints quickly.

A traditional oil painting may take two to three weeks, or even one to two months.

However, the time spent on painting knife paintings is usually calculated in hours or even minutes.

But Gu Weijing was beyond the ordinary meaning of fast; it was almost like he was using magic to conjure a painting out of thin air.

This is the charm of legendary-level skills,

his familiarity with the painting knife even surpassed ordinary acquired proficiency.

The painting knife was an extra extension of his arm,

many times Gu Weijing didn’t even need to deliberately think about which step he was at; as long as he followed his instincts, the ideas in his mind would quickly manifest on paper.

Finally,

Gu Weijing stopped.

He stared at the picture in front of him, the rose-colored flowers blooming over the green bush, the terrain spreading around resembling a pock-marked lunar surface.

Overall, it already appeared to be a quite mature painting knife work, carrying a sense of desolate fantasy, bright and vivid.

"Not enough."

Gu Weijing concentrated on thinking; he felt the painting was still missing something.

It lacked... that fairy tale quality that could capture the eye.

He stared at the picture for a moment, then took a deep breath and expressionlessly began to forcefully scrape away the paint on the canvas using a straight-edged metal painting knife.

Maniac!

In the eyes of any knowledgeable painter, Gu Weijing’s approach would be quite incomprehensible, or they’d believe he was insanely ruining the work.

Scraping paint off the canvas or board with a painting knife, aside from correcting the picture, is indeed a painting technique.

Removing paint forms a squeezed layer of paint embedded in the canvas’s texture, creating a unique color representation through a blurry, shadowy effect, improving the painting’s surface texture.

But this method is always used to handle the thin layer of paint applied with brushes.

The painting knife technique, in contrast, is a very typical impasto technique.

Gu Weijing’s bold painting style layered the paint on the canvas like different creams on a cake, several millimeters thick.

Such compression led to upper and lower layers of paint intertwining and twisting chaotically, often making the picture murkily unpleasant to look at.

Gu Weijing wasn’t crazy; he did it deliberately.

This was the supernormal control power granted by legendary painting techniques that gave him courage.

He was confident that he could further compress and mix the different layers of paint under his control using the painting knife as an external force.

It’s akin to a chain reaction,

controlled compression mixing under external forces could interpret a foggy, dreamy blending effect.

An uncontrollable reaction would, like an atomic bomb, blow the picture into a chaotic mess.

Success and failure differed by a scarcely detectable fine line between the painting knife’s force and angle.

Gu Weijing had confidence in himself and in legendary-level painting techniques.

He gradually mixed different paints, and eventually, at a certain moment, the entire picture achieved a view that felt both clear and translucent.

The lower layer of paint and the upper layer of paint skillfully combined to create a blending effect.

The light diffused,

just like a fairy tale.