The Versatile Master Artist

Chapter 89 - 80: Human World’s Clamor and the Threshold for Participating in the United States Art Exhibition_2

When it comes to oil painting, you don’t even have a basic sketch foundation. Everything you paint turns out distorted—the girl you painted looks like a monkey, and the apples like watermelons. What creativity are you talking about?

It should be attributed to electronic albums rather than real works; the thoughts on painting, line, and color separation of these individuals are far less clear than when he directly observed the physical "Cyan Bird Singing Bamboo."

But an overview is still sufficient.

To be fair, as a student, what they painted is quite good.

They are not much older than Gu Weijing, yet their proficiency in various techniques is almost at par with Gu Weijing, who has gained the panel,

and in some aspects even surpasses him.

Elder Cao wasn’t wrong, having a Tier One Professional level skill is almost a threshold for participating in calligraphy and painting exhibition.

If both sketching and oil painting reach the level of a Professional Painter, they should be able to tiptoe towards an award-winning level.

Gu Weijing has already given up on the idea of continuing to use the Identification Skill on artworks in the amateur group,

because although their painting levels are indeed good, they are not so high as to be beyond his understanding, nor have they reached the level of excellency that impacts him.

Not worth continuing to spend Identification Skill.

He switched from the selection section above to the album of the master group, which is also his target for this competition.

The style of the entire page of the electronic album immediately became vastly different.

First, the 2012 Singapore International Art Biennale, the selected entries in the master group were only three-quarters of the student group, yet the number of pages in the album was more than three times the student group.

Each album in the master group had a dedicated intro to the artist and critique analysis, every painting had its own dedicated webpage.

Any one of these works can be called excellent, with precise brushwork and exquisite painting techniques.

[Title of Work: "Flying Bird, Sea Water, and Red Sun"]

[Sketching Technique: Lv.5 Tier Two Professional]

[Watercolor Painting Technique: Lv.5 Tier Two Professional]

[Emotion: Simple Works]

[Remark: A technique one major realm higher than the host’s highest skill, unable to accurately display experience bar, and may cause mental fatigue, please use Identification Skill cautiously]

Gu Weijing merely used Identification Skill casually to examine a watercolor painting and amidst the vast array of color separation, felt a certain mental oppression.

This is the side effect of forcibly analyzing works that exceed one’s level.

Fortunately, this discomfort was fleeting.

"Two Tier Two Professional." Gu Weijing clicked his tongue.

Art appreciation is a very subjective matter,

even if such art exhibitions have professional committees and art connoisseurs on panel, it’s inevitable that excellent works are buried, or mediocre ones make it through by luck.

But usually, those who can participate in the master group are at least on roughly the same level line.

This gouache painting isn’t good enough to win an award; to participate in the master group exhibition, it should at least have a comparable level.

"Upgrading two Tier Two Professional isn’t an easy task."

Gu Weijing felt the pressure.

He now has two Tier One Professional skills, seemingly not far from Tier Two Professional.

But the calculation doesn’t work this way.

Every skill requires a full 5000 experience points to upgrade to full, two skills mean ten thousand, equivalent to him needing to spend at least one hundred thousand dollars to buy a ticket to participate in the exhibition.

Moreover, at the exhibition, especially overseas exhibitions, the requirements for participating Chinese Painting are much higher.

Possibly it requires Tier Three Professional, or even higher, to solely invoke the impact of Chinese Painting and intrigue those overseas judges.

Though improving painting skill is not easy.

But painting has always been more than just a rigid test of technique.

There’s also emotion.

Even among the master group entries this year, Gu Weijing found a particularly interesting painting.

It was an oil painting with a gloomy style.

This oil painting is titled "Fisherman," employing the technique of pointillism, using very small color dots arranged closely for coloring.

Pointillism is a relatively complex oil painting technique.

It requires tightly arranged color dots throughout the painting, but absolutely no overlap, similar to the principle of color mix in display screens.

The author of this painting clearly didn’t do well in this respect.

With Gu Weijing’s current vision, without activating skills, he can easily spot several color dots sullied and blurred together.

This painter’s painting skill is mediocre in the amateur group, in the master group can only be described as poor.

The real place that catches Gu Weijing’s attention, even for an electronic album, this painting compared to others evidently possesses a distinct——vitality.

Gu Weijing activated Calligraphy and Painting Identification Skill.

Twisted sea water, boiling waves, the fisherman fighting against the sea...

The sound of the wind, rain, sea, and the fisherman’s moans, merged into a sigh fleeting by Gu Weijing’s ear.

[Oil Painting: "Fisherman"]

[Sketching Technique: Lv3 Semi-Professional (813/1000)]

[Oil Painting Technique: Lv4 Tier One Professional (1220/5000)]

[Emotion: Heartfelt]

"No wonder it feels different, the emotion of this painting actually reached [Heartfelt]!"

This was the first time Gu Weijing saw a work where the emotion assessment exceeded [Simple Works].

He who possesses an emotion panel knows how difficult it is to maintain focused emotion throughout the painting of a work, let alone a higher stage of [Heartfelt] assessment.