Painting Working Group, Mural No. 9.

"Cut, I wouldn't have come with my father if I knew I wouldn't have done this even as a painter."

Tsunamasa Sakai put down the tray and paint in his hand, yawned heavily through his mask, and said to his companion under the ladder.

"Hey...... Aren't you bored with that one? ”

Gu Weijing just raised his head, glanced at the other party, and shook his head.

"Not at all, and I don't think your sister would have asked that kind of question if she were here."

This is already the second day of the mural restoration project.

Although the official name of this project is "Shwedagon Pagoda Fresco restoration", it can be simply translated as "Shwedagon Pagoda Mural Restoration Project".

But it's actually a complicated job.

First of all, Shwedagon Pagoda is just a general concept.

Since the Bagan Dynasty in the 8th century, Myanmar has been known as the Land of a Thousand Pagodas and is home to one of the largest Buddhist murals in Southeast Asia.

The project includes the Shwedagon Pagoda itself, the Chinese-style Fuhui Temple on the left side of the Shwedagon Pagoda built by local overseas Chinese businessmen during the Guangxu period, and a series of related historical sites.

Secondly, mural restoration is also a very complex category, and can even be completely independent of the painting system.

It includes pigment analysis, disease classification statistics, retention of original data, protection of the site environment, etc.

The knowledge in a specific field of expertise can be written into a large textbook of hundreds of pages, which cannot be explained in a few days and nights.

All in all.

For this kind of ancient temple murals, the main thing is to repair, supplemented by supplements, and the repainting is the secondary.

For those walls where the weathering cracking is not serious, it is basically able to retain the original appearance of the monuments. Processes such as injection molding are generally used. It is similar to the practice of carefully patching a layer of glue between the wall embryo and the mural, and having a special cultural relics restorer smooth out all traces of wind erosion through processes such as powder filling.

The work of restoring the contents of these similar broken porcelain is the responsibility of the professional working group of the cultural relics conservation profession, which is considered two parallel lines with these painters, and has nothing to do with it.

The work projects presided over by Mr. Cao are mainly divided into two categories.

First of all, there is the painting of the new mural.

Some of Yangon's monuments date back more than 2,000 years.

The dynasties of the past dynasties have changed, wind, frost, rain and snow. In modern times, the British, French, and RB people came and went like foreign colonial invasions.

Many of the original murals have been lost to history.

This part of the work focuses on the murals that have been recorded in history but have disappeared, and reappear in the world by painting them in situ based on ancient materials.

Secondly, for the murals that are partially damaged due to various reasons, they are repaired without destroying the original appearance.

The second restoration of the mural will destroy the original state if you are not careful, resulting in a "noisy" visual effect.

This is also the reason why the official Myanmar government is obsessed with inviting so many internationally renowned master artists.

The first is to enhance the international influence, and the second is that local artists do not have this confidence.

The real test of painting skills is definitely not the turn of young people like Gu Weijing and Sakai Tsunamasa.

Gu Weijing's current task is to carefully paint the wall with pink Chinese painting paint according to the manuscript and template given by others - to restore a lotus flower on the wall numbered NO.9.

"Color simple patterns."

This is the work assigned to young artists like him and Tsunamasa Sakai.

In the case that the walls have been painted white, the painting of the mural is divided into three major steps - name: drafting, inking, and coloring.

These three steps can also be used to clearly divide the work and level of the various artists in the working group.

The so-called draft is also called a powder draft, or a score.

This part is the easiest, but also the hardest.

The simplest is because it is the least physically demanding to operate, and it is just a normal painting on paper.

It is the most difficult because this step is the basis of everything, it determines what should be painted in the mural, how it should be painted, and what the layout of the space should be.

Typing drafts and blueprints on drawing paper is also the most testing of the artist's skills.

The person in charge of this work is Cao Lao, Sakai Issei, Lin Tao and some other highly respected old artists.

The second step is to ink, which requires the painter to use charcoal to draw the mural on the wall with a charcoal basket of paper and the mural is completely drawn, and after confirming that it is correct, the outline of the mural is outlined with black ink lines.

This step is the work of ordinary painters like Gu Weijing's grandfather, Gu Tongxiang.

The third step, which is also the most work-intensive, is coloring.

The veteran painters will confirm what kind of color should be painted on the sketch, such as (beige) yellow, (light) blue, and each color number has a special mark.

After the labeling is completed, the young students are given the responsibility of painting the colors in order to reduce the workload.

After experiencing Cao Lao's sentence "I won't allow him", now the painters are all diligent to death, and they have experienced every step personally, for fear that they will not be able to hit Cao Lao's muzzle.

For example, the face of the figure, the form of the animal, and the Buddha's Dharma body are not at all the work that requires a lot of color, and it is not the turn of the young painter to practice.

They could only draw lotus flowers, paint background colors, and depict prayer flags in the hands of monks, which were not complicated in structure.

Tired and unaccomplished, this is what Tsunamasa Sakai called "hire a painter" can accomplish.

"Hmph, it sounds like my sister knows you very well."

Tsunamasa Sakai was even more unhappy.

He originally wanted to work with his sister Katsuko, but after coming to Shwedagon Pagoda, he discovered a problem.

Due to religious practices, many temples are only accessible to barefoot men and monks.

For example, the group of the mural numbered No. 9 is located.

Sakai Katsuko can only go to the project where Fuqing Temple is located, and in the Shwedagon Pagoda, the group with Sakai Tsunamasa becomes Gu Weijing.

【Chinese Painting: Beginner (74/100)】

Gu Weijing carefully controlled the movement of the nib.

Today is the second day of the project, and there are less than thirty hours left before the deadline for the panel reward mission, so there is not much time.

He hadn't rested for a moment since morning, and Gu Weijing had to seize every opportunity to improve his proficiency as much as possible.

Copying the master's works is the only way to improve one's artistic skills.

After the Middle Ages, almost any famous master of art started by copying the works of other masters.

On the manuscript powder book in his hand, each pattern is solidified with the painstaking efforts of the old artists.

Even if it's a simple coloring, you can learn a lot.

So he didn't have the impatience of Sakai Tsunamasa at all.

Gu Weijing gently held the pen and sketched the petals of the lotus flower along the black ink line.

I watched as the mastery experience points on the panel changed to [Chinese Painting: Beginner (75/100].