The Versatile Master Artist

Chapter 86 - 78: Opinions

Gu Weijing saw the progress bar labeled [0\1000] on this skill panel.

This skill has no cooldown time, but activating it requires consuming free experience points, and it’s not cheap.

Fifty free experience points.

Activating the skill once is equivalent to throwing away one million Myanmar Kyat.

Although his business on Nutshell is much better than before, after he upgraded his Chinese Painting to the level of a Professional Painter, the remaining free experience points were just a little over a few hundred.

If he were to use this skill a thousand times to level up, it would require a total of fifty thousand free experience points, which translates to enough for him to max out a Tier One painting skill ten times, amounting to fifty hundred thousand dollars.

However, Gu Weijing knows,

calligraphy and painting identification and appreciation have always been quite professional, and asking someone to evaluate a painting is like inviting a treasure expert to appraise antiques, it’s never cheap.

When facing painters who are not as good, finding where they fall short is not a difficult thing.

Just like without the Calligraphy and Painting Identification Skill, Gu Weijing could also analyze Yakai Gangchang’s sketch level, roughly fluctuating around Lv.3 semi-professional middle tier, based on his own painting insights.

But when it came to Professor Lin Tao, he knew the other’s sketches were well-done.

To what extent they were well-done and why they were good, Gu Weijing could only express a vague feeling.

Aesthetics is an abstract concept; everyone has the instinct to feel beauty.

However, to accurately evaluate beauty and understand it, one needs the eye trained by appreciating and observing famous paintings, along with sufficient artistic cultivation.

Many people lack this ability,

even Gu Weijing doesn’t dare to claim he has it.

For artworks that are significantly above his level, even he can only exclaim in awe.

Just like when Elder Cao achieved the ’finishing touch’ effect in the painting "Buddha Worship and Protection Painting."

Gu Weijing felt a shiver in his soul.

This kind of shock is the influence of a master.

But if speaking from a professional painting perspective, does he truly understand this painting?

Does he understand the subtle power in Elder Cao’s seemingly effortless stroke, or comprehend the tumultuous emotions within the master?

This is very difficult to capture accurately.

That’s why, in the calligraphy and painting industry, professional curators and art critics are so important.

Their influence on painting art trends often surpasses that of the painters themselves.

Even many godfathers of the art circle and museum, portrait gallery, and art gallery directors are not painters by origin but are professional art critics or curators.

They don’t need to know how to paint, they just need to know how to appreciate it.

Want to invite these people to look at a painting?

Five hundred dollars?

Sorry, who are you looking down on?

You’ll need to add at least two zeros to that, and you still might not get an appointment.

To give a more intuitive example, a piece of artwork is like the smooth drop of water in "Three-Body" or the lunar monolith in science fiction writer Clark’s works, with a proportion forever 1:4:9.

And everyone’s eyes observing beauty are like the microscope in a scientist’s hand.

Everyone has a slightly different natural magnification, and as art courses and artistic cultivation advance, your magnification becomes larger, and your observational skills become more refined.

There is no perfect artwork in the world; if any painting appears unbelievably beautiful to you, it just means the painter’s level far exceeds yours.

Of course, if your magnification is too low, then it’s easy to find all artworks more or less similar—and you might not grasp some overly avant-garde art forms.

This is why some unlucky masters remain hidden in the dust.

Although Gu Weijing isn’t wealthy, if fifty experience points can dissect a work from line to color, it’s undoubtedly worth it.

It’s like having a top-notch art teacher guiding your progress at all times.

He strolled around the painting shop and placed his finger on a painting in the gallery titled "Cyan Bird Singing Bamboo."

This was a work collected by his uncle.

Previously, Gu Weijing always felt something was odd about this painting, but he couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

He activated a Calligraphy and Painting Identification Skill.

The next second,

the entire painting changed before his eyes.

The painting hanging on the wall quickly disassembled in front of him.

The bird’s beak, cheeks, filaments, the crimson-dyed claws, hundreds of clearly discernible tail feathers...

All elements on the rice paper were like the threads drawn by a deft farmer woman’s hands from silk cocoons, extracted and disentangled bit by bit.

It was as if a light screen appeared in Gu Weijing’s mind.

The pigments and lines of the entire painting shattered like crystals hit by a hammer, exploding into countless colorful and beautiful fragments for an instant.

Then, in a very short time, they fused again.

A new panel appeared in front of Gu Weijing.

[Title: "Cyan Bird Singing Bamboo"]

[Chinese Painting Techniques: lv.4 Tier One Professional (3968/5000)]

[Emotion: Going through the motions]

Gu Weijing blinked his eyes. The painting before him remained the same, yet a new understanding arose in his heart.

As he again set his gaze on the Cyan Bird painting hanging in the gallery, he could almost clearly sense the use of brush and thought process of the painter while creating it.

High sky, light clouds, the cyan bird poised to flutter, landing on the lotus on the river’s surface...

Huh?

Lotus? River water?

He realized why he thought the painting was odd.

In the tradition of Chinese painting, the cyan bird, also known as the kingfisher fisherman, is adept at fishing, often paired with lotus and river water in the painting’s scenery.

But this painting is titled "Cyan Bird Singing Bamboo," meant to portray a mountainous woodland scene, without a drop of water in sight.

"Why did I think of lotus flowers?"

He felt the emotion of the painting was strange, as if intentionally fractured from the middle.

Gu Weijing’s gaze fell on a part of the bamboo, especially dense, resembling splattered ink.

"So...is it like this then."

He rested his chin in contemplation.

Observing there were no customers in the store and a guard stood at the door, ensuring no trouble would occur, he took the "Cyan Bird Singing Bamboo" painting down from the gallery wall and brought it inside.

He already had a guess about the situation of this painting.

If his guess was correct, this should be a defective piece.

Unexpected variables appearing during the painting process are all too common.

Sometimes it’s a change in creative direction, sometimes purely a mistake.

Like wrong color mixing, accidentally marking the paper, or a work that’s fallen and left a footprint in the blank space.

Many art students have encountered such scenarios.

If it were an oil painting, one could scrape it off with a painting knife, or directly cover it with another color, but this can’t be done with Xuan paper.

If one doesn’t want the entire painting to be scrapped, one can only start over.

In Dongxia’s traditional comedy, there is a jest: a painter failing with a beauty fan can change it to Zhang Fei; failing with Zhang Fei can change it to a willow tree; if all else fails, paint the fan black and write in gold.

Although exaggerated, this situation isn’t uncommon.

Gu Weijing wanted to verify his suspicion that the bamboo in the painting was modified afterward.

"Grandpa, do you think this painting seems a bit off?"

"What problem is there?"

Upon hearing Gu Weijing’s question, his grandfather, Gu Tongxiang, wasn’t the first to respond; his aunt already furrowed her brows.

"Is there a paper problem, or is there damage or stains on the painting? Impossible, Old Gu checked it during the purchase, maybe you didn’t pay attention when you were minding the store before the New Year, and stained the painting. If you’re bad at business, fine, but don’t cause trouble for the family..."

She began to nag and criticize.

This painting wasn’t Gu Tongxiang’s work; it was delivered by an art dealer familiar with the elder responsible for the store’s operations.

The calligraphy and painting market has big fish and little fish, and tiny shrimp beneath the little fish.

Gu’s Calligraphy and Painting Shop and Xiaosong Gallery are modest like street stalls, yet in Yangon, they are considered major deals within galleries.

Yangon’s high-end galleries are concentrated mainly in two areas.

One is the banks of the Yangon River, bustling with cruise ships daily, with several peer shops scattered in the northern wealthy district and the Golden Valley with diplomats concentrated, across a few streets.

These galleries mainly serve foreign tourists.

The remainder is spread across shopping streets, snack streets, and alleys selling tourist souvenirs, book, and art night markets with many visitors.

The works sold here are mostly painted by art students, hung like drying rags across extended wires or laid on the ground.

Gu’s Calligraphy and Painting Store, a small, well-decorated mini-museum-style art gallery, occupies a certain industry gap between these unrefined street stalls.

Even if an exquisite piece occasionally appears among the street stalls, it can’t fetch a high price.

Yet Gu’s Calligraphy and Painting Store’s business isn’t large enough to maintain a complete, subordinate team of contracted brokers and agents like those larger galleries, providing a steady flow of artwork.

The only consistent "contracted" artist is the elder Gu Tongxiang.

Recently, the old man has aged, and Gu Weijing is too young without a reputation, so often there’s a need for stock sourced from small art dealers and second-hand traders.

These agents possess connections; they gather fine art treasures and ancient paintings cornered in different cities, or through various contacts procure some artworks from familiar local artists.

If they find buyers, they sell directly.

If unable to sell paintings, they inquire at secondary markets like Gu’s Calligraphy and Painting Shop about acting as agents or selling them outright.

An industry chain has formed.

This "Cyan Bird Singing Bamboo" painting was acquired from an art trader, costing over two million Myanmar Kyat, by Gu Weijing’s elder.

About a thousand dollars; for their calligraphy and painting store of this size, it isn’t considered cheap.

Seeing his nephew claim the painting has issues, his aunt immediately became displeased.