Chapter 120: Try your hand at drawing with a knife

Gu Weijing returned home, closed the bedroom door, and opened the work email he had left on the fiverr website.

He browsed for a moment,

and found the cooperation invitation that schostic mentioned on Twitter.

“Dear Artist Ms. Detective Cat

Schostic Group has always been committed to cooperating with outstanding artists from all over the world, and it is a great honor to provide bright new stars in the illustration industry with the opportunity to show themselves. Invite you to participate in the group's Little Prince project.

Now, we have officially sent you a trial draft contract. The specific details are attached at the end of the article.

If you have any questions or concerns about the contract, please contact the legal consultation office of the group

Wish you good luck, Schostic Group Little Prince Project Team ”< /p>

Gu Weijing spent a few minutes simply scanning the content of the email.

This is an invitation from the publisher to submit a manuscript.

The trial draft contract is not a formal commission. It is more of a final interview for the employer to test the painter's ability before signing a large order after the employer has a preliminary intention to cooperate with the painter. .

For example, a news weekly may have about fifty illustrations, and the newspaper will use one page as a trial draft before the first cooperation.

Not all illustrators are willing to do trial drafts.

It is rumored that some employers in the industry will defraud artists' works for free in the name of trial drafts.

But when it comes to publishing giants, the risk of being cheated is very small.

Not only that,

It is an honor in itself to get an invitation from the Schostic Group for a trial draft.

The manuscript invitation offer in the mailbox is obviously much more standardized and formal than the grass-roots team-style cooperation model that Gu Weijing used to take orders on the Internet.

Even if it was just a trial draft, the publisher still issued a dozens-page contract and a more detailed mission statement.

He does not have an agent yet, so these documents need to be handled by Gu Weijing personally.

Gu Weijing clicked on several files attached at the bottom of the email.

The first is two independent draft style books and painting format books.

The style book stipulates the employer's requirements for the painter's painting style, whether the painting should be thick or flat, whether the line drawing should be colored, whether it should be flat style or forest style, etc.

The format book stipulates the size of the manuscript. If it is electronic painting, it stipulates the printing resolution and pixel size required for the original electronic album.

These two documents are the basis for serious commissioned projects in the illustration industry.

Some employers are more troublesome,Even the ordering of the scene layers in the electronic drawing and the types of brushes used by the artist have strict conventions.

It would take a long time just to change the cumbersome formats required by Party A using a computer.

"This is very tolerant."

Gu Weijing nodded.

Miss Sakai Katsuko’s guess was correct. Judging from the requirements of this document, the publishing house did regard herself as a first-line illustrator.

In the industry,

the more high-end the project, the less red tape constraints employers often give artists.

It is more about giving a conceptual macro-requirement, while in terms of specific painting methods, it is willing to give well-known painters greater freedom to create.

The Little Prince project team only requires that the sample must be in color, and the print resolution after scanning must be above 400i pixel unit density. There are no strict requirements on the specific painting method.

The last document is the instruction letter.

The instruction book is a summary of the content of the illustration request, which is the specific content that the publisher wants you to draw.

This DF is not long, only two short sentences.

The content of the trial drawing is based on the Little Prince's Section 8: "On the Little Prince's planet, there used to be some simple flowers growing. These flowers had only one layer of petals, took up no space, and did not hinder anyone. . They will bloom in the grass one morning, and then quietly wither at night. "Create an illustration based on the theme.

The colors are required to be dreamy, blurry, warm, with enough sense of space and layering, in line with the author Saint-Exupéry’s true feelings, with a fairy tale temperament, and enough impact on children.

"Dreamy, blurred, warm"

Gu Weijing stared at the assignment in the mailbox for a moment.

"A fairy tale contract" he was pleasantly surprised.

Fairy tale illustrations were originally the type of tasks Gu Weijing hoped to receive after getting the Hua Dao Hua.

The carving of fine details in knife painting is inferior to that of brush painting, but it has an inherent advantage in expressing the blurred colors of children's fairy tales.

It’s like milk meets Oreos, butter meets a butter knife.

The painting method of Hua Dao Hua combined with the Little Prince’s text, which requires a sense of space and has a natural fantasy fairy tale quality, is a perfect match.

In the final analysis,

The original origin of Hua Dao Painting comes from the painter’s unremitting pursuit of space and beautiful colors.

The painting style of Hua Dao Hua is very similar to the ethereal and otherworldly atmosphere pursued by the aesthetic school of the 19th century.

The slogan pursued by the Aestheticism School is originally derived from the creed in Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales: The real world is the enemy of art, and all art arises from innocence.

Coincidentally,

Although two centuries ago, when aestheticism was just born, painting knivesPainting cannot yet be regarded as an independent painting style.

But those representatives of aestheticism, whether it is Edward Jones or James Whistler, like to use a large number of oil painting knives in their painting processes.

Whistler, the great American national treasure painter, is considered to be one of the founders of the oil painting knife method.

Gu Weijing likes this contract very much.

Not only was the other party’s request completely covered by his legendary knife-drawing skills, but what’s more, the invitation for the trial manuscript came from the youth publishing giant Schostic Group.

This kind of large publishing group is almost the favorite partner of illustrators.

The negative problems of ordinary small publishing houses such as long payment collection cycles, low sales revenue, lack of book marketing channels, etc. were not problems at all before schostic.

Not only is the salary generous, but every additional book sold is a silent advertisement for the illustrator.

Gu Weijing was really surprised as if he had been struck by a pie falling from the sky.

He pondered for a moment, but did not immediately start drawing hastily. Instead, he bought an old version of The Little Prince on Amazon and quickly read it from beginning to end.

The task of drawing illustrations for the little prince does not place high demands on illustrators.

There is no need for Gu Weijing to come up with any additional ideas.

Because when Saint-Exupery was writing this book, he had already drawn hundreds of illustrations for this book, even to the point where each page had an independent illustration.

In the past, many classic versions of the Little Prince used the original author’s own graffiti as illustrations.

Schostic Group also made the decision to update these illustrations by the original authors after much hesitation.

This decision is somewhat of a last resort.

First of all, Saint-Exupéry himself was not a professional painter. The level of these illustrations is very average, and some are just amateur-level drafts.

But the more important reason is that they cannot get the illustration copyright of the original Little Prince.

This is a very embarrassing thing.

Schostic’s main competitor in North America, the original Little Prince copyright holder, Townsend Mann Publishing Group, successfully relied on complex legal maneuvers and lobbying activities to get the Little Prince’s illustration image in the world. The United States separately registers "cartoon characters" that are independent of the text.

In North America, the copyright protection period for cartoon illustrations is 95 years after the death of the author.

To put it more bluntly,

Although the text of The Little Prince has entered the realm of public books, its original illustrations are still in the hands of competitors and they cannot use them.

Either hire a new illustrator,

or else just publish white text.

There is no third option.

In the publishing industry, using familiar classic illustrations as a moat for book copyright belongs to the publishing industry.One of the common operations of printing companies.

Except for The Little Prince, this is also true for the series of illustrations created by master illustrator Shepard for The Wind in the Willows.

Even if publishing companies in non-competitive Asian countries want to introduce them to the domestic market, the price quoted for the copyright of the illustrations themselves will be much higher than the price quoted for the text itself.

Even so,

In the draft requirements, Schostic also required the artist to use the tone of Saint-Exupéry's own illustrations as a model.

However, having said that,

This relieved Gu Weijing’s creative burden. With Saint-Exupéry’s original rough design, he only needed to draw on this blueprint. Just make your own paintings good.

Gu Weijing carefully scanned the original illustration of the little prince, occasionally placing an identification spell on it.

From a professional artistic perspective, there is nothing surprising about these illustrations, but the illustrations written by the original author will always be the version most closely linked to the article.

After browsing it from beginning to end, Gu Weijing had an idea of ​​the general composition of the picture.

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

In just ten seconds,

A single layer of rose petals grew on the screen, then the second, and the third, and the green shade and grass appeared. Spreading around the flowers, and then the uneven land

If any onlookers were watching Gu Weijing's painting movements at this time, he would definitely open his mouth in surprise.

It was so fast

It was like magic.

In just a few minutes, a grass with flowers blooming appeared from its general outline. onto the canvas.

Gu Weijing's movements were smooth and smooth without any trace of hesitation.

He didn’t even need any additional color mixing. With a gentle wrist, the oil painting knife gently picked and smeared the palette. The paint was mixed together like thick cream, and then he patted it. on the canvas.

The difficulty of painting with a knife lies in control. Even the smallest pear-shaped knife has a contact area with the canvas itself that is several times that of a normal paintbrush when applying paint.

Controlling a drawing knife is a subject that requires not only technique but also feeling.

The paint knife cannot be adjusted when applying paint.

If your hand shakes or you hesitate when "cutting", the paint will appear under the uneven pressure. Ripples like water waves.

What matters is cleanliness.

If someone looks like an old lady crossing the road when painting with an oil painting knife, hesitating and trembling and not daring to draw the knife, then the final effect of the painting will definitely not be very good.

Almost all masters who are good at painting knife skills are very fast when painting with an oil painting knife.

It takes two or three weeks to paint a traditional oil painting.Even a month or two is common.

But the time for knife drawing is basically calculated in hours or even minutes.

But Gu Weijing was not fast in the ordinary sense. It was as if he was using magic to create a painting out of thin air.

This is the charm of legendary skills.

His familiarity with the oil painting knife has even exceeded the level of ordinary practice making perfect.

The oil painting knife is an extra extension of his arm.

Many times, Gu Weijing does not even need to think about which step he has reached in his painting. He just needs to follow his feelings and what is in his heart. It will quickly appear on paper.

Finally,

Gu Weijing stopped.

He stared at the scene in front of him. Rose-colored flowers bloomed on the green grass, and the uneven land like the moon spread around.

Overall, it looks like a quite mature Hua Dao painting, with a desolate and dreamy feeling, bright and vivid.

"Not enough."

Gu Weijing thought carefully, and he felt that the painting was missing something.

It lacks the fairy tale quality that can catch people’s attention.

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

Madman

In the eyes of any knowledgeable painter, Gu Weijing's actions are quite unreasonable, and they even think that he is destroying this work in a frantic manner.

The oil painting knife scrapes off the paint on the canvas or drawing board. In addition to being used to correct the picture, this behavior is indeed a painting technique.

After scraping off the paint, a layer of paint will be formed that is extruded and trapped in the texture of the pressed canvas, resulting in a unique color expression of blurred ghosting, which can be used to increase the surface texture of the painting.

But this method has always been used to deal with the thin layer of paint applied by the brush.

The painting method with an oil painting knife is a very typical thick coating method.

Gu Weijing’s painting method of wide opening and closing, the layers of paint on the canvas are like different flavors of cream on a cake, covering them together, several millimeters thick.

With such squeezing, the upper and lower layers of paint are messy and twisted together, and the picture can easily become dirty and unreadable.

Gu Weijing was not crazy, he did it intentionally.

This is the extraordinary control of the legendary painting method that gives him courage.

He is confident that he can use the oil painting knife as an external force, and further squeeze to force the different layers of paint to gradually mix under his control.

This is just like a chain reaction.

Controllable pigment extrusion and mixing can produce a hazy and misty fusion effect under the action of external force.

An uncontrollable reaction will be like an atomic bomb, blowing up the screen to pieces.fall.

The difference between success and failure is the almost imperceptible difference in the strength and angle of the oil painting knife.

Gu Weijing has confidence in himself and his legendary painting skills.

He mixed different paints little by little, and finally at a certain moment, the entire painting formed a thin and transparent feeling.

The lower pigment and the upper pigment are cleverly combined together to form a mixed color effect.

The light is dense,

It’s like a fairy tale. Please remember to collect it, the latest and fastest website is free to read without anti-theft