Don't get me wrong.
Maka still has no good impression of Detective Cat.
If the grassroots amateur painters who draw casually on the Internet can attract attention, what should they, the students of prestigious art schools who study hard in their humble beginnings, do?
The professional attitude of the round-faced girl Naturally aligned with art critics.
This is the moment.
Maka is still more willing to believe the original point of view.
From the perspective of profound artistic conception and art philosophy, Detective Cat’s works must be as vulgar as the oil painting shareholders have evaluated.
It just so happened that Detective Cat drew them beautifully.
That’s all.
Truly great works of art require both civil and military forces, just like war and peace.
Possessing both outstanding technique and profound spirit.
Grassroots painters on the Internet can occasionally draw beautiful pictures that are eye-catching.
But they generally lack systematic aesthetic education and a deep understanding of art philosophy.
Besides the beautiful pictures, the deeper artistic connotation is relatively lacking.
This must be the reason why Detective Cat is looked down upon by the big guys.
Beautiful on the surface, empty in spirit.
Detective Cat is just a painter, not a painter.
Maka actually has not figured out what art critics think an illustration for a fairy tale should look like in order to be said to have profound artistic depth.
But this is the only reliable guess she can imagine now.
No matter how unpopular it is with drawing knives and drawings.
After getting this new edition of Little Prince in hand, I asked Maka to say that the illustrations in her hand are amateurish works full of technical errors.
Maka really doesn’t believe it.
Even though the only advantage of this set of illustrations was that they were beautiful, the fact that they were so beautiful really touched her deepest heart.
The colorful oil paint strokes of Detective Cat are like the layers of hyacinths falling in early autumn beside the railway in the suburbs of London.
There is no essential difference between fallen flowers and withering weeds in the gaps between railway tracks.
But it is a gaze that can make people lose consciousness.
For example, in the face of Leonardo DiCaprio’s great beauty, do girls really care? The Motion Picture Association of America once believed for twenty years that his performance was hollow, that he used too much force and only relied on his appearance. Criticism of eating.
"Maybe I'll just buy one."
As Maka stared at the illustration cover of the little prince for a longer time, the little person who agreed to buy the book gradually gained control. The urge to push the heads of villains who objected into the water and drown them.
Maka was not the only one who was also moved by the illustrations and changed her mind.
When Maka went to the bathroom, she met the young girl with pink earrings. The young girl was touching up her makeup in front of the mirror.I was using my cell phone to call my boyfriend to talk about the autograph session.
The girl who clearly told them before entering that she preferred the original style with pictures and illustrations changed her mind within a short time.
The tone of the conversation was full of love for the detective cat illustrations.
While she was washing her hands next to her, she almost didn’t hear the other person mentioning his excitement when he met the translator Charlie Hawke.
These are readers and fans who love the translator Mr. Hawke and came here specially.
What kind of fan loyalty is there?
What’s even more outrageous is that Maka also saw the black international student in the queue.
This cash-strapped guy is not only queuing up to buy a book, but he is also holding a hardcover edition with more solid materials
Please,
spend your money Go out and turn left to buy a big pizza and eat it. Isn't it delicious?
"Maka, why did you come here?"
Kelly walked around the bookstore several times, and finally found her companion deep in the corner of the huge bookstore. friends.
The blonde girl saw Maka holding a fairy tale book, her head lowered and gnawing her nails wildly.
As friends who lived together in the same dormitory, she could see the tangled atmosphere surrounding Maka at a glance.
"It looks good, I won't lie to you. Detective Cat's artistic level is enough to be a professor in our college."
Kelly put her hands on her hips and said "I told you so" Your" look.
Exceptionally proud.
“Tch, to be a professor in our school basically requires a Ph.D., and you have to be from a top-ranked art academy. She is not qualified as an online painter. And our school does not have the skills to draw with a knife. It’s an elective course that can’t be taken seriously.”
Maka has a bad mouth.
"Then you don't like it?" Kelly didn't believe it.
"Hmph, he was lucky enough to paint well this time. Sister, I will judge her one by one. Although I don't like her, this book is not that bad. Students at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts read it. This kind of illustration is too childish, so it’s not a problem to show it to children. To be clear, I’m not buying it for myself, it’s just an Easter gift.”
Maka held it. book and walked to the cashier.
“You have a tough mouth.”
Kelly smiled and poked her best friend in the waist.
"What are you laughing at, little girl? If you say anything, you will throw away water. Girl, I am not the kind of person who refuses to admit losing a bet. I have done all the tailoring work this semester."< /p>
Maka took out her cell phone in front of Kelly and dialed her boyfriend's phone number.
"Hey, dear. We have made an appointment to go fishing in the Scottish Highlands next weekend, right? Well, I'm fine. Just book two rooms at your hotel over there. That's it. I'm not angry. It's not your fault. That’s wrong. I’ll explain to you tonight and stop talking nonsense. If you don’t say you love me, what’s the matter if we don’t sleep together?”/p>
Maka was too lazy to pay attention to the incomprehensible and unbelievable yelling of her boyfriend on the other end of the phone, and directly issued a verdict: "Not for a weekend, but for the entire next month, I will not maintain an intimate relationship with you. Why? Do you want to?"
"Detective Cat is indeed interesting this time, but don't blame me for criticizing you, Kelly. Oil Painting Magazine has sentenced her to death in her career, and she will not have a good future."< /p>
Maka glanced at Kelly.
“I don’t think so. It’s the hardest truth in the world that illustrations can be liked by the audience. I think the shareholders of oil paintings may be in trouble this time.”
p>Kelly smiled and spread her hands.
"Time will tell us the answer."
When Maka took the little prince and walked through the shelves in front of the cashier at the door to queue up, she suddenly stopped again.
Damn it,
Since I bought it, I bought it.
Otherwise
it would be more than ten pounds more expensive anyway if it were replaced by a hardcover version.
Well, maybe we can just do it in one step and just buy a set of Little Prince’s collector’s gift box
“Hello, Miss, you spent a total of 9,699 pounds on a collector’s gift box. Who are you? Are members of Waterstones Bookstore using Apple Wallet or Aya? Do they need to use cash coupons?"
After 20 minutes.
Maka and Kelly each appeared in front of the checkout counter holding a dark collector's edition solid wood gift box.
The teller at the cashier's face smiled brightly when he saw such a big customer.
Collectible gift boxes, priced from £60 to hundreds of pounds, are produced to give gifts to hard-core readers.
Schostic Group’s collection gift box this time includes a hardcover physical book of the Little Prince, a hand-made doll of the Little Prince, a special illustration collection and a set of illustrated postcards.
The UK price is 9699 pounds.
Buying this thing for one hundred pounds sounds like the profit margin is so high that it’s a bit like cutting leeks.
It is not considered sinister to put it in the field of collection gift boxes.
Money can’t buy fans like it.
Many gift boxes of board game collections such as Dungeons and Dragons sell for thousands of pounds.
The Diablo 4 game collection gift box set of Activision Blizzard, which was launched at the same time as The Little Prince, is also priced at a similar price.
It doesn’t even include the main body. Players still need to spend tens of pounds more to buy the game alone, but tens of thousands of sets have still been sold.
"Anyway, I guess it will be difficult for me to buy Detective Cat paintings again in the future, so this time I will show kindness."
Maka felt guilty before Kelly could tease her. made a statement in advance.
Her fingertips spray-painted the cover of the Little Prince on the Dunes illustration on the cover of the solid wood gift box, and the more she looked at it, the more excited she became.
"It's so beautiful."
Maka put the gift box into the shopping bag and looked upGlancing at the blonde girl, "Kelly, you have to wait until the autograph session is over to take away the poster, right?"
"Yes, the autograph session is expected to end at 5 p.m. at the latest. There are too many people here. , I went to the Starbucks across the street and drank a latte while waiting. During this time, I can read the entire Little Prince."
Kelly nodded, "If you are in a hurry, you can also go back first. School."
"Forget it, at this point, I can't catch up with the handsome guy's show when I go back. I just go to the shopping mall next to it."
Maka glanced at her watch.
"We will meet in front of the bookstore at 4:55 pm. The book signing should be almost over by then."
At dusk,
When Maka found her best friend in front of Waterstones Bookstore again, she was already holding various large and small shopping bags in her hands like magic.
Perfume, eye cream, lipstick, high heels
The parents of students who can study art in this era are most likely to have little financial resources.
The credit card limit that Maka holds is not low, plus she is entangled and unhappy about losing the bet today.
She naturally spent the whole afternoon shopping.
When I almost couldn’t get it anymore, I sent Kelly a message and wandered back to Waterstones Bookstore on the east side of the shopping street.
Normally speaking.
The most popular time for a book signing is when people first enter the venue.
Most die-hard fans who really want to meet the author and translator will queue up in advance. If you enter early, you can also listen to the creator's lectures, speak and ask questions.
If you come late, you can just buy signed books.
Therefore, autograph sessions in the UK rarely run into the afternoon. Most of them are only half a day, or last for two or three hours.
Except the author needs a break.
Also because 70% of the entire book signing event can be sold in the first hour, and the traffic will become less and less after that.
Towards the end of the book, the author often wants to continue signing, and there are not many people in the bookstore.
Harry Potter, Prince and Meghan’s couple’s royal gossip autobiography Spare Tire, a popular book with sales exceeding one million on the first day, can be signed from beginning to end. Non-stop.
However, in the newspaper photos of this book signing event, the queue at the door can stretch for two miles, and the real sea of people is noisy.
Maka and Kelly saw that there were a lot of people in front of Waterstones Bookstore when it opened today, a lot in the ordinary sense.
The sheer number of readers of this top-notch book, which requires ambulances and medical emergency teams to be on site to prevent fainting and stampede accidents, is not even close to a hair.
The queue waiting in front of the door before entering is less than one-tenth as long as others.
Maka estimated that when she came back, there would be no one in front of Waterstones Bookstore..
Maybe Mr. Charlie Hawke is already preparing to leave.
But there are exceptions to everything.
When the queue in front of Waterstones Bookstore not only did not become shorter at all, but also appeared in her sight, it looked almost the same length as at the beginning.
Maka opened her mouth in shock.
The pile of shopping bags hanging on my arms almost fell to the ground.
“hoyoy is in a big trough”
Maka put the shopping bag on the white pedal in front of the Starbucks store and pointed to the dinner time, still suffering. People queuing up in front of the bookstore.
"All these people are here to buy the Little Prince's fairy tale book."
She said incredulously.
"I'm as surprised as you. Are you hungry?"
Kelly pushed a plate of blue plum pancakes with more than half left to Maka's side, indicating that she could make it "Let's have something to eat. Looking at the situation, I think this autograph session will take a while to end."
"Even if the public opinion on the Internet is very popular, the translation master Hawke The gentleman also has a lot of charisma, but it’s a bit too exaggerated.”
Maka sat on the chair, stuffed a piece of pancake dipped in honey into her mouth, and took out her mobile phone while chewing.
She took a photo of the crowd in front of the bookstore across the street. In the process of selecting the perspective, she inadvertently took a large push of shopping bags from the table and the fairy tale book Kelly put on the table. into the camera viewfinder.
Then she edited a short tweet and was invited by her best friend Kelly to attend the Little Prince's autograph session. It's hard to understand that there are so many people queuing up at 5pm.
"The Little Prince Detective Cat illustration is so popular"
"I bought Yves Saint Laurent Platinum Mirror Special Floral Perfume for 180 pounds, I envy you. Another table It’s the new version of Little Prince, and it’s much prettier than I thought.”
“It’s hard to say, I can’t see it clearly in the pictures on my phone. I’ll catch you when I get back to school.” Check with Kelly's dormitory."
"I'm sure this photo was taken now. At this time, were there so many people lining up before the bookstore?"
" ”
As the number of viewers below the tweet increased, alumni continued to like and comment on it.
Maka looked at this scene with a smile.
According to this trend, it is estimated that it will not be long before this tweet becomes her tweet with the highest number of likes and retweets in recent times.
Kelly has carefully and repeatedly admired all the illustrations of the Little Prince in the past few hours, and she feels extremely satisfied.
Especially the separate illustration book in the collector’s edition gift box.
Each page can be individually framed and hung on the bedroom wall.
The blonde girl also saw Maka’s new tweet and knew that the other party’s main purpose wasWhen asked to tell Versailles about the newly bought cosmetics, she thought for a while and said, "It's because of the poster."
"What"
"I mean, there is still such a thing in front of Waterstones Bookstore." There are many people queuing up, most likely because of the illustrated posters on the promotional stands outside the store."
Kelly took a sip of coffee.
These tourists were all attracted by the illustrations. Even though it sounded incredible, this conclusion was the most likely answer she could think of.
The blonde girl has been sitting in front of the coffee shop opposite for the past few hours.
Everything that happened in the bookstore happened under her eyes.
When she first came out with shopping bags, the number of readers did tend to shrink.
But there are always new tourists entering Shushi Bookstore.
People are leaving and coming.
After a while, the number of tourists entering and the number of customers walking out of the store seemed to maintain a harmonious balance.
The store is not too crowded, but under the control of the staff, there are always people waiting in line at the door.
From Kelly's observation, the readers still waiting at the door at this time may not be the same kind of readers at all as the crowd when they attended Dean Hawke's lecture.
These people are more like the international student who accidentally walked into the bookstore to join in the fun.
Easter is the most important holiday in the British Isles after Christmas.
As the Easter holiday approaches, the number of passengers on Oxford Street exceeds 200,000 people every day.
Dense crowds of people pass by the bookstore all the time, and almost every minute someone is attracted by the beautiful posters at the door.
In the biblical story, gods destroyed the Tower of Babel, and since then there has been a language barrier in the world. People on the mainland are divided by different languages, nationalities and accents. From now on, there will no longer be a world language that can connect the hearts of all people.
Then he probably ignored the method of painting.
When beauty is sublimated to a certain concentration, visual art can moisten everyone's heart without any prerequisites and cultural accumulation.
The people waiting in front of the bookstore now should be just tourists who are simply here to shop.
Visitors may never know that a book signing will be held here today, they may not care about the public opinion turmoil on the Internet, they may not have heard of Charlie Hawke and Detective Cat, or even Saint-Exupéry and The Little Prince. Completely unfamiliar.
Such people are the majority in the world.
Perhaps when they got up this morning and sat at the dining table eating breakfast cereal, they never imagined that at some point in the afternoon they would walk into a bookstore and buy a fairy tale book.
This is the original intention of shopping.
On a leisurely walk, you can find something that makes you excited and buy it.
But in most casesThe products that people are happy to wear in their pockets may be the clothes on the models in the display window, the flying cakes from India that smell of roasted flour, or the bottled perfume that is full of floral fragrance in the Yves Saint Laurent experience store.
Buying books in physical bookstores is a bit old-school and out of step with the times.
Compared to the woody smell of ink and pulp, people began to prefer electronics.
Gone are the days when physical books were the most glorious, when everyone on the street carried a pocket book in their bag. Waterstones Bookstore, which has a good cooperative relationship with the Schostic Group, is already in the best financial position in the world. A large physical bookseller, its annual shipment share is also declining year by year, and it even needs to rely on selling coffee to increase revenue and reduce expenditure.
Today.
A shocking illustration poster has successfully turned the gears of history for half a century forward, awakening countless people's urge to pick up a physical book that they have not had for a long time.
In principle, the illustration poster in front of Waterstones Bookstore is no different from the photo of global brand ambassador sports superstar Son Heung-min on the sign of the Burberry store next door.
The only difference is that at this moment, the illustration of Detective Cat is more charming than the bright smile of the Premier League Golden Boot.
And buying this book is not like buying a dark Burberry trench coat, which requires ordinary people to eat dirt for half a year.
People glanced over
watching,
stopped,
beating their hearts.
In the bookstore, Dean Hawke was covered in hot sweat.
The old gentleman drank the ink from the ink bottle, tightened the pen, wiped off the few traces of carbon ink on the 17k rose gold pen tip with a tissue, and used a specially designed font under the title page of the book. He signed the letters of the surname "hak" in a flourishing way.
It feels so good
Dean Hawke felt the numbness and soreness coming from his fingers and wrist bones, but his whole body was still very excited.
The book signing is the premiere of the book writer.
Looking at the sea of people in the bookstore, the eyes of every face are shining with longing. Everyone is singing your name and praising your achievements.
Any writer will be suffocated with joy for this sense of accomplishment.
Translation is called the secondary creation of books. In the process of localizing foreign classics, the translator is definitely the most critical person.
Charlie Hawke is the dean of the School of English Literature at Oxford University and one of the top three translators in England. He has translated countless world famous books and published a polyphonic book called Broken Random World.
Whether it is a translated work or a personal creation, Hawke's writing direction is biased towards traditional serious literature with an average age of readers over 35 years old.
It is often a hot scene that can only be seen at popular fantasy signings such as Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, and Twilight.
This was also the first time we met Dean Hawke.
“MyThere are so many fans. The literary taste of local readers in London seems to have improved a lot over the years."
The old man was overjoyed and handed the book back to the aunt in front of him. He was in a happy mood and said casually "Thank you." Thank you for attending my book signing. ”
“Hmm, the illustrations in this book are so beautifully chosen. "
The aunt also gave a thumbs up to the Dean of Oxford.
Uh.
The corners of Dean Hawke's mouth twitched slightly.
p>This is not the first time that the old man has heard this compliment. He even encountered a reader asking the staff if he could get that illustration for his signature.
The illustration is very good. Beautiful, Hawke would definitely admit it.
Many of Saint-Exupery's storylines are inseparable from the help of illustrations.
When the old gentleman learned from the publisher, When he couldn't get the set of simple illustrations from the original work this time, and when he needed to add them later, Hawke still had a lot of worries about whether the illustrator this time could understand the artistic conception of the little prince. I won’t hold myself back.
Fortunately, the detective cat should have a relatively deep understanding of the plot of The Little Prince.
This is the first time he saw this set of illustrations. At that time, I was also amazed by the expressiveness of the pictures.
But what is the key point of this book?
It is his delicate and meaningful words.
He always heard praises for the illustrations at the sales, and Mr. Hawke felt a little sour that he was being overtaken by the crowd.
It happened that a staff member was holding a large basket of recycled purchase intention sheets from readers who attended the sales. Walking by.
Dean Hawke stopped signing and waved to the staff. Please remember to bookmark, the latest and fastest non-theft free reading