Gu Weijing returned home, closed the bedroom door, and opened the work email he left on the Fiverr website.

He browsed for a moment,

I found the invitation to work with Scholastic on Twitter.

"Dear Artist Detective Cat Lady,

The Scholastic Group has always been committed to working with the best artists from all over the world, giving the brightest and brightest stars in the world of illustration the opportunity to showcase themselves...... It is our pleasure to invite you to participate in the group's "The Little Prince" project.

Now, we officially offer you a trial contract. (Details are attached in the annex at the end of this article.) ）

If you are willing to accept our invitation, please send the prepared sample to the project assistant's email address before 5pm London time this Sunday at the latest.

If you have any questions or contract questions, please contact the Group's Legal Counselling Office......

- Good luck, Scholastic Group's "The Little Prince" project team. ”

Gu Weijing took a few minutes to simply scan the content of the email.

This is an invitation from a publisher.

The trial contract is not a formal assignment, it is more of a final interview to test the artist's ability before signing a large order after the employer has a preliminary intention to cooperate with a certain artist.

For example, a Newsweek may have about 50 illustrations, and the newspaper will take out one of the pages as a test draft before the first collaboration.

Not all illustrators are happy to try out their manuscripts.

It is rumored that some employers in the industry will deceive artists of their works for free in the name of trial drafts.

But on the publishing giant, the risk of being scammed is minimal.

Not only that,

It is an honor to receive an invitation to a manuscript from the Scholastic Group.

The invitation in the mailbox is obviously much more standardized and formal than the grass-stage team-style cooperation model that Gu Weijing received orders on the Internet before.

Even if it was only a trial draft, the publisher still provided a contract of dozens of pages long and a more detailed statement of the mission.

He doesn't have an agent yet, so these documents need to be handled by Gu Weijing himself.

Gu Weijing clicked on the attached documents at the bottom of the email.

First of all, there are two separate manuscript style books and drawing format books.

The style book stipulates the employer's requirements for the painter's painting style, whether the picture is thick or flat, whether the line drawing should be colored, whether it is a flat style or a forest style, and so on.

The format book specifies the size of the manuscript, and in the case of electronic painting, the printing resolution and pixel size required for the original electronic album.

These two documents are the basis for serious commissioned projects in the illustration industry.

Some troublesome employers have strict conventions on the ordering of the scenery layers of the electronic sketch and the type of brushes used by the artist.

It will take a long time to change the cumbersome format required by Party A just by holding the computer.

"This ...... That's a lot of tolerance. ”

Gu Weijing nodded.

Miss Katsuko Sakai was right, and judging from the requirements of this document, the publishing house did indeed regard itself as a first-line illustrator.

In the industry,

The more high-end the project, the less red tape the employer tends to give the artist a little bit of red tape.

It is more about giving a conceptual macro requirement, and in terms of specific painting methods, it is willing to give well-known painters more freedom to create.

The "Little Prince" project team only required that the sample must be in color, and the printing definition after scanning must be above 400PPI (pixel unit density), and the specific painting method did not make strict requirements.

The last document is the Directive.

The instruction is a summary of the content of the illustration request, that is, the specific content that the publisher wants you to draw.

This PDF is not very long, only two short sentences.

[Manuscript drawing content: In verse 8 of "The Little Prince" - "On the planet of the Little Prince, there used to be some simple flowers, which had only one layer of petals, which did not occupy space and did not hinder anyone. One morning they would bloom in the grass, and in the evening they would all wither. "Create an illustration for the theme. 】

[Requirements: The color is dreamy, blurry, warm, with enough sense of space and layering, in line with the real feelings of the author Saint-Exupéry, with a fairy tale temperament, and enough impact on children. 】

"Dreamy, vague, warm ......"

Gu Weijing stared at the manuscript assignment in the mailbox for a moment.

"Fairytale contract!" He was pleasantly surprised.

Fairy tale illustrations were originally the type of tasks that Gu Weijing most hoped to receive after getting the knife drawing.

Knife painting is not enough to carve fine details compared to brushes, but it is an innate advantage of this painting method in expressing the blurred colors of children's fairy tale style.

It's like milk meets Oreo, butter meets butter knife.

The painting method of knife painting is paired with a text like "The Little Prince" that requires a sense of space and is born with a fantasy fairy tale temperament, which is the most natural pair, and the right medicine is prescribed.

Ultimately

The original origin of knife painting comes from the painter's unremitting pursuit of a sense of space and aesthetic color.

The painting temperament of knife painting is very similar to the ethereal atmosphere pursued by the nineteenth-century aestheticist school of painting, which is detached from the world and does not eat the fireworks of the world.

The slogan pursued by the Aestheticist school was originally derived from the credo of Wilde's fairy tales - the real world is the enemy of art, and all art is born from innocence.

Coincidentally

Although two centuries ago, when aestheticism was just born, knife painting could not be regarded as an independent style of painting.

But the great aestheticians, whether Edward Jones or James Whistler, were fond of using oil knives extensively in their paintings.

Whistler, a great American national treasure, is considered one of the founders of the oil painting knife method.

Gu Weijing liked this contract very much.

Not only is the other party's request completely included in his legendary knife painting technique, but also the invitation to the manuscript is from the youth publishing giant Scholastic Group.

This kind of large publishing group is almost a favorite collaboration of illustrators.

The negative problems of the average small publishing house, such as long payment collection cycles, low sales share, lack of book marketing channels, etc., were not a problem at all before Scholastic.

Not only is the pay good, but every extra book sold is a silent advertisement for illustrators.

Gu Weijing was really a little surprised as if he was hit by a pie falling from the sky.

He pondered for a moment, but instead of starting to draw hastily, he bought an old version of "The Little Prince" on Amazon and quickly flipped through it from beginning to end.

Illustrating "The Little Prince" is not very demanding for illustrators.

You don't need to be extra creative.

Because Saint-Exupéry had already drawn hundreds of illustrations for the book at the same time as he wrote it, even to the point that each page had a separate illustration.

In the past, many classic versions of "The Little Prince" were all accompanied by the original author's own graffiti.

The Scholastic Group also hesitated before making the decision to update the illustrations of these original authors.

This decision has some unavoidable implications.

The first is that Saint-Exupéry was not a professional painter himself, and the illustrations were of a very average level, some of which were only amateur drafts.

But the more important reason is that they can't get the copyright of the illustration of the original Little Prince.

It's embarrassing.

Scholastic's main competitor in North America, the former "Little Prince" rights holding company, the Townsensman Publishing Group, successfully relied on legal complications and lobbying activities to register the illustrated image of The Little Prince as a separate "cartoon character" in the United States.

In North America, the copyright term for cartoon illustrations is 95 years after the author's death.

To put it more bluntly,

Although the text of "The Little Prince" made its way into the public edition of the book, its original illustrations are still in the hands of competitors, and they can't use them.

Or hire a new illustrator,

Otherwise, it would have to be published in white text.

There is no third option.

In the publishing industry, it is one of the common operations of publishing companies to use well-known classic illustrations as the moat of book copyright.

In addition to "The Little Prince", such as the series of illustrations created by illustrator Shepard for "The Wind in the Willows", etc., this is the case.

Even if a non-competitive Asian publisher wants to introduce them to the domestic market, the copyright price of the illustration itself is much higher than that of the text itself.

Even so,

In the manuscript requirements, Scholastic also asked the artist to base the illustration tone of Saint-Exupéry himself.

But then again,

This reduced the burden of Gu Weijing's creation, and with Saint-Exupéry's original rough design, he only needed to draw his own picture on this blueprint.

Gu Weijing carefully swept the original illustrations of "The Little Prince", and occasionally put an identification technique.

From a professional artistic point of view, these illustrations are not unusual, but the illustrations written by the original author are always the version that is most closely linked to the article.

After browsing from beginning to end, Gu Weijing had an idea of the general composition of the picture.

He turned off his computer, walked over to his easel, stretched the canvas, and then used his oil knife to mix some paint and gently pull the first twisted arc on the canvas.

Just a dozen seconds,

A single layer of rose-colored petals grows, then a second, then a third, and green shade and grass spread from the flowers to the uneven earth......

If a bystander was watching Gu Weijing's actions at this time, he would definitely open his mouth wide in surprise.

It's so fast!

It's like some magic,

In just a few minutes, a picture of grass with flowers blooming from the general outline has appeared on the canvas.

Gu Weijing's movements could not see any hesitation, and they flowed smoothly.

He didn't even need any additional color grading, his wrist was gentle, and the paint was mixed together like a thick cream with a light touch of the oil knife on the palette, and then he slapped it on the canvas.

The difficulty of painting with a knife is control, even the smallest pear-shaped knife has several times the contact surface between it and the canvas itself when applying paint.

Controlling a knife is a university question, and it is not only about the technique, but also about the feeling.

The paint applied by the knife cannot be adjusted.

If you have to shake your hands or hesitate to "go under the knife", the paint will show ripples like water waves under uneven force squeezing.

It's all about being clean.

If anyone is painting with an oil painting knife and looks like an old lady crossing the road, hesitating and trembling and not daring to go under the knife, then the final effect of the painting will not be very good.

Almost all masters who know how to draw knives are very fast when painting with oil painting knives.

A traditional oil painting is often painted for two or three weeks, or even a month or two.

However, the time taken to draw with a knife is basically calculated in hours or even minutes.

But Gu Weijing is no longer fast in the ordinary sense, it is like using magic to conjure a painting out of thin air.

This is the charm of legendary skills,

His familiarity with oil painting knives has even surpassed the realm of ordinary practice makes perfect.

The oil painting knife is an extra extension of his arm,

Many times, Gu Weijing doesn't even need to think about where he has reached in painting, as long as he follows his feelings, the thoughts in his heart will quickly manifest on paper.

finally

Gu Weijing stopped.

He stared at the scene before him, rose-colored flowers blooming above the green grass, and the moon-like uneven ground seemed to spread around.

On the whole, it looks like a fairly mature knife painting, with a sense of desolation and dreaminess, bright and vivid.

"Not enough."

Gu Weijing pondered intently, and he felt that there was something missing from this painting.

Missing ...... The kind of fairy tale temperament that can catch people's eyes.

He stared at the canvas for a moment, then took a deep breath and began to scrape and squeeze the paint off the canvas with a straight-edged metal oil painting knife with a blank expression.

Lunatic!

In the eyes of any knowledgeable painter, Gu Weijing's approach is quite unreasonable, and he even thinks that he is destroying this work in a frenzy.

An oil painting knife scrapes paint off a canvas or canvas, and in addition to correcting the picture, this act is indeed a painting technique.

When the paint is scraped off, a layer of pigment is formed that is squeezed and trapped in the texture of the pressed linen canvas, creating a unique color expression of blurred ghosting that can be used to enhance the surface texture of the painting.

However, this method has always been used to deal with the thin layer of paint applied by the brush.

The oil painting knife painting method is a very typical impasto method.

Gu Weijing's painting method is wide open and closed, and the layers of paint on the canvas seem to be covered together like different flavors of cream on the cake embryo, which is several millimeters thick.

When squeezed in this way, the upper and lower layers of paint are messily bitten and twisted together, and the picture is easily dirty and unsightly.

Gu Weijing was not crazy, he did it on purpose.

That's what the otherworldly control of the legendary drawing method gives him courage.

He was confident that he would be able to use an oil painting knife as an external force, and further extrusion forced the different layers of pigment to gradually mix under his control.

It's the same as a chain reaction.

The controllable pigment extrusion and mixing can bloom under the action of external forces, and can bloom a hazy and misty fusion effect.

The uncontrollable reaction will be like an atomic bomb, blowing the picture to pieces.

The difference between success and failure is the almost imperceptible difference between the strength and angle of the knife.

Gu Weijing has confidence in himself, and he is also confident in the legendary painting method.

Little by little, he mixes different paints with each other, and at a certain moment, the whole picture forms a feeling of thinness and transparency.

The lower and upper layers of pigment are subtly combined to create a color mixing effect.

The light is dense,

It's like a fairy tale.

(End of chapter)