Gu Weijing recognized the origin of the painted mural in front of him.

As a very classic Buddhist mural painting, the Buddha protector map is a relatively common shape in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, southeast, Yunnan, Guizhou, Myanmar, Thailand and other mural groups influenced by the Dongxia cultural circle.

This mural is about two meters wide and about one meter high, the scene in the picture is detailed, the characters are very rich, not only the Buddha, the Bodhisattva, the goddess, the protector of the Heavenly King, but also the king, queen, concubine of the world, and even the little ghost and the lion at the foot of Guanyin, the tiger and the leopard and other animals listening to Zen are a lot.

But it is a great pity that the painting is incomplete.

A huge crack peeled off from the left to penetrate the plump skin and skin of the heavenly maiden with a solemn expression, the maid holding the flower bowl in her hand, the queen who slowly walked forward with her hands folded, and a group of concubines who were surrounded by banners behind her, and even one side of the cheek of Guanyin Master.

Gu Weijing shook his head regretfully, these scars directly destroyed the shape of this exquisite mural.

Myanmar's cultural relics and monuments have been destroyed several times.

The Dunhuang murals of Eastern Xia were very heart-wrenching in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, and a large number of scrolls and paintings were bought by Western adventurers.

The same thing is not uncommon in modern Southeast Asia, where Buddhist monasteries and murals in ancient cities such as Bagan in eastern Myanmar still occur from time to time.

In particular, in many cases, a large number of foreign tourists and locals do not have perfect awareness of cultural relics protection, which makes it more difficult to preserve cultural relics.

Gu Weijing is not a cultural relics scholar, even if he comes as a painter, it is also very heart-wrenching to see such a beautiful monument destroyed.

"How can you get such a difficult task?"

Gu Weijing shook his head, quickly opened the manuscript powder book in his hand, and roughly browsed the restoration plan of this mural against the content on it.

These frescoes, which have a small number of direct disappearances, are the most difficult to restore.

The cracks in the picture completely destroy the overall beauty of the mural, but more than 80% of the original fresco color has been intact.

This kind of fresco monument is directly covered and repainted, which is a crime of tyranny.

There are generally three different treatments.

It is possible to completely only carry out protective restoration, without art restoration, this method can be added to a wooden keel frame or the like, which is the simplest.

If the process is more complicated, the current practice in developed countries in Europe is to fill in the broken blank space of the mural, and then cover a thin layer with a light pigment similar to the surrounding color, this method is called the shadow method.

The hatching method is one of the commonly used techniques in Western mural restoration in recent years, and was proposed by the Italian art restorer Cesare Brandi.

In the restoration of murals, he advocated that "the incomplete part should be the background of the painting, not the other way around", and proposed the use of spaced lines to weaken the relationship between light and dark in the completion area, so as to reflect the relationship between the recognizable and the whole.

In recent years, this technique has also begun to appear in the restoration process of silk calligraphy and painting and Dunhuang murals in the East.

Its advantage is that it can ensure that the original calligraphy and painting are not damaged, and the disadvantage is that it will leave obvious traces of repair, just like a few drops of light blue water in a deep blue ocean, which makes people see the difference between the two at a glance.

The most difficult part is the complete traceless restoration, which tries to restore the original appearance of the painting with paint in an authentic way.

This method has obvious advantages over the first two, and it completely gives new life to the mural.

But why is this approach less adopted?

The reason is that it's so hard.

If it is not done well, the later restoration will have repeated color differences with the original picture, and it will look like the cream on a person's face has not been wiped out.

The so-called dog-tailed mink is nothing more than that.

This mural is the third most difficult process.

Gu Weijing flipped the signature on the manuscript, the column directly in charge of this mural was signed by Cao Xuan's name, and this painting was directly responsible for Mr. Cao.

At this time, the blank space of the No. 17 mural in front of me has been filled with broken and repaired cement, and someone has re-painted the broken ink line with a paintbrush with exquisite craftsmanship.

Only the cracks in the mural are blank spaces waiting to be painted.

The artist's line drawing restoration skills are very exquisite, which is breathtaking.

It's not that the repaired brushstrokes are completely fine, they are 100% perfect.

On the contrary, its art style is very consistent with the original mural in terms of the skill of the pen and the shade of the ink line.

Except that the ink line has just dried, the color is slightly thicker.

Judging from the eyes of Gu Weijing who was blessed by the "Maha Handbook", it was impossible to see the traces of the acquired repair.

Every artist has his own unique style, and it is amazing that the person who restored this mural was able to completely integrate his own style into the style of the original monument.

For the restoration of cultural relics, truth is more important than good. Or rather, it's really the best.

"I don't know if Cao Lao's disciple is sketching the manuscript on the wall, or if Cao Lao personally wrote it."

Gu Weijing took out the color palette and began to try the color matching.

Restoring the murals, with their intricate compositions and a large number of different color variations, was a challenge even for him after owning the Maha Notes.

He was very cautious and even a little hesitant.

For a moment, Gu Weijing did suspect that in terms of the difficulty of this mural, this did not belong to the restoration work of the mural that he could have access to.

He didn't think that someone wanted to harm him, but he wondered if the staff was negligent.

However, the opportunity is rare.

He's got itchy hands.

There is an even more important reason, he is a painter.

He didn't think anyone could do a better job of mixing the paint than he had obtained the Maha Notes.

No matter how many concerns there are in his heart, Gu Weijing doesn't want to make a painting worse when he can do it well, which is a blasphemy against art.

This is the self-cultivation of the Gu family who can hold a paintbrush for generations no matter how the external situation changes.

"Stone blue, blue juice, copper barium powder......"

No, this color is still a bit thick.

"Maybe a little zinc white and clam powder might be more appropriate?"

……

Square, Buddha worship activities.

Watching the splash of water flowing in front of the altar representing the Zodiac Buddha shrine, in the chanting of the monks and monks on the side, a peaceful and peaceful smile appeared on Cao Lao's originally serious face.

Many painters, especially older ones, choose religion for spiritual peace.

There is a saying that there are no atheists in the trenches of fear, and the same is true for artists whose spiritual world is always in turmoil.

Art and religion have something in common in the way they understand and grasp the world.

In his book "Art", the British aesthete Clive Bell wrote that art and religion are two ways for people to escape from the real environment and reach the state of madness. Aesthetic ecstasy and religious fanaticism are two factions that unite each other. Art and religion are both means of attaining the same state of mind.

It's easy to go crazy in the art industry, and if you don't have a tenacious spirit, it's easy to become withdrawn and weird.

It is not uncommon to suddenly hug your head and cry or scold while drawing.

Every painter who struggles to make progress on the road of art has experienced a similar experience-

Either the critics will not be satisfied, or they will not be satisfied.

I am satisfied, the art critics are not satisfied, the critics are satisfied, and I am not satisfied.

Finally, I was satisfied, and the critics were satisfied, but the market was not satisfied.

In addition to the art itself, these are all important reasons for the artist's insomnia, tossing and turning, and hair loss.

This is especially true for young painters who are still struggling.

In fact, at Cao Lao's age and status, there is no outsider who can criticize him, and the only one who can make him feel irritable and dissatisfied is himself.

The No. 17 mural was a big reason for his bad mood.

Hundreds of years have passed, and the pigments used by ancient and modern painters are different, and the configuration is different.

Not to mention, there are all sorts of traces of erosion and weathering caused by the passage of time.

Even with the most modern computed tomography (CT) scans, it is difficult to avoid subtle color variations in the pigment blending process.

At this time, it is more useful to rely on human experience.

However, no matter how superb Cao Lao's technique is, it cannot completely restore the techniques of ancient painters hundreds of years ago, especially the matching of pigments.

It can only be close, it can only be infinitely similar, but it cannot be the same.

Whether it is the change of light and shade of color or the texture of the pigment, it is actually difficult to compare with those ancient painters who have secret recipes passed down from generation to generation.

During the preparation period before starting the project, Cao Lao also anticipated possible problems through the study of scanned photos and several field visits.

He had drawn the sketch and several different color schemes based on the photographs in advance.

However, after the mural restoration project actually began, it was still a little different from his expectations.

Although this color scale gap is almost to the point where it is difficult to detect unless the naked eye observes it up close.

But for Cao Lao, different is different.

If he only pursues the big difference, there is no need to preside over the project at all.

This made the little old man a little irritable, and he proposed early to come to the Buddha in the afternoon.

"I hope the Bodhisattva will bring you good luck." Cao Lao thought.