"The first asteroid dwelt a king, dressed in a white glazed leather robe trimmed with scarlet, and sat on a simple and majestic throne......"

The old-fashioned gas lantern on the stone table danced on the flames, and Anna wore headphones and held a yellowed fairy tale book and read softly.

In front of her, the sun was setting over Austria's mountainous river valleys.

To the north, the tower is the highest of the Elena family estate, and its thick, rugged stone bars make up the centuries-old structure.

It is said that before the Elena family acquired the land, it once belonged to the fief of a duke of the Holy Roman Empire.

The watchtower was built to defend against the cavalry of the Mongol Khan, a nomadic race from the steppes who had historically fought from Central Asia to the banks of the Danube.

Guards with excellent eyesight would stand on the towers and watch the horizon nervously day and night, sounding the horns of vigilance at the first sight of the dust raised by the galloping cavalry, if their throats had not already been pierced by the sharp arrows of the scouts.

Centuries have passed, and all traces of medieval antiquity in the manor have long since been wiped out by time, and only this sturdy minaret remains.

When Anna's aunt took over the estate, she did not make significant repairs to the monument, but only hired craftsmen to build wheelchair-friendly rails on the stairs of the watchtower, and then gave herself the key to the watchtower along with a book.

Saint-Exupéry said that every child needs a place away from adults and quietly watching the sunset and the stars by themselves. My aunt said.

That book was "The Little Prince".

Anna is a literary girl, and "The Little Prince" is the book that has accompanied her the most since she was a child.

A curious and kind-hearted little prince, a sensitive and longing to be loved by a rose, a smart and romantic fox, a vain king......

These fairytale characters accompanied her through the lonely sunsets of her childhood in a wheelchair.

When the detective cat asks her to find a fairy-tale knife to draw a manuscript.

Anna's first thought was the new version of The Little Prince that Scholastic was working on.

She knew the book too well.

The knife drawn by the detective cat is beautiful, but lacks soul.

By the standard of an illustration, passing is qualified.

Not only is it qualified, but it is simply excellent.

There is only a small fly in the ointment, this is a very beautiful illustration, but it is not an illustration that fits the appearance of "The Little Prince" in her heart.

Or rather, Anna thinks – it lacks a bit of magic that can do miracles in sales.

Illustration is the painting method that art dogs are most exposed to and has the highest demand in daily market.

There are tens of millions of painting art students in the world, and how many of these people can finally become professional serious artists who are regarded by galleries and art museums as earning millions a year?

The vast majority of people have not gone into majors such as game concept artists, print advertising, fashion design, and publishing illustrations, but still draw all kinds of practical illustrations.

The lower limit for illustrations is low and the upper limit is high.

They are all published illustrations.

What low-end illustrators do is "usable", while high-end illustrators want to be "classics".

The same set of illustrations, the works of high-end artists can bring 10%, 20% or even 30% more sales to the publishing house, and their illustration posters hanging on the street can make more audiences take the initiative to enter the cinema.

Low-end artists are just a bonus to a book, while a Hans Christian Andersen Award-winning illustrator can get a well-known newspaper like the New York Review of Books to dedicate a news page to increase exposure.

This is the reason why the latter is worth a hundred times and a thousand times that of the former.

To impress the audience and create a miracle of sales, in addition to painting beautifully, it is also necessary to paint with soul.

Detective Cat Lady's knife drawing, like a delicate doll.

The eyebrows, eyes, facial features are all beautiful, and the curves of the body are all charming.

Sadly, there is no temperature.

Readers will be amazed by such a work, but they will not necessarily take the initiative to pay for such a work when there is no need to buy a book.

Illustrations that really have magic,

It should be possible to do so, and one evening afternoon, a tired office worker walks past the window of a bookstore, and the corner of his eye inadvertently sweeps the beautiful new book in the window.

So, he suddenly stopped, stared at the book behind the glass for a long time, seemed to be touched by something, and then went into the store to buy it.

It starts with being amazing and loves the heart.

What the detective cat's painting lacks is enough to make the reader empathize.

Anna felt like she was a bit nitpicky.

There is not even one in 10,000 world illustrations that can become eternal classics like "Niels Riding a Goose" and "The Wind in the Willows".

Even the Scholastic Group would not have such unrealistic expectations when it came to requesting a manuscript.

Anna was not reconciled.

It's already so well drawn...... It's just a little bit away from the classics, and she thinks that her agent should be able to do something for the detective cat.

"The Little Prince" is a classic fairy tale, and there are a variety of long book reviews and expert interpretations on the Internet.

Anna, however, doesn't think it would have any good effect to shoehorn the "chewed bread" of these book reviewers into the detective cat, who doesn't know much about this fairy tale.

What the painter needs more is the feeling of hearing a certain sentence and suddenly moving in his heart.

So

What Anna does is simply read.

She took out the copy of "The Little Prince" that she had grown up with from the drawer, asked the butler to fetch the computer, sound card and wireless network card, and went to the watchtower that she used to go to in her childhood.

Looking at the sunset over the valley in the distance, she made an appointment, and the language connected with the illustrator artist from far away in Africa, who whispered to her those classic passages that had left a deep impression on Anna.

……

Uhauh—

Gu Weijing tore off a page in his sketchbook and shook his head in disappointment.

In his ears was the calm voice of Mr. Sloth, who held a paintbrush in his hand and was full of all kinds of scrap papers.

Mr. Sloth seems to be taking this "literary tutoring" very seriously, and has been reading to himself for almost two hours without stopping.

But Gu Weijing is still a little bit uninteresting here.

Mr. Sloth does not disassemble the fairy tale for himself, but combines the deep meaning and literary metaphor represented by the character of each character.

His only request is that whenever Gu Weijing hears that there are new fairy tale characters in a paragraph.

He was required to listen to Mr. Sloth read a book while drawing stick figures of the characters in his heart on his pen, trying to capture the character traits of the fairy tale characters.

Gu Weijing worked very hard to do this.

The main plot of The Little Prince is not complicated.

Roughly speaking, the protagonist "The Little Prince" visits seven different little stars in space, and on each star he meets a fairy tale resident with a different personality.

And what Mr. Sloth read just now is the passage where the little prince comes to the first small planet and meets the "king" there.

He listened to Mr. Sloth read while trying to draw a line sketch of the king in his sketchbook.

"The King" does not belong to the category of complex personalities in the fairy tale "The Little Prince".

In the original work, the king is the only inhabitant of the first small planet "325" that the little prince visited after leaving his planet.

This king claims to rule over all, and his rule must be respected and not disobeyed.

Gu Weijing once deliberately consulted Wikipedia.

The encyclopedia says that the king's character is characterized by arrogance and arrogance, but he is a little cowardly in his heart.

He is an arrogant, hypocritical and incompetent autocratic aristocrat, who will be dissatisfied and complain about everything that is not to his liking.

My favorite thing to do every day is to take the calendar and give orders to the sun, moon and stars to "doodoo".

Seeing these introductions, in Gu Weijing's mind, the character of the king is probably a combination of the old Empress Dowager Cixi in the old movie and the crazy astronomy enthusiast.

But in his paintings, there is still something missing.

Gu Weijing just couldn't grasp the feeling that this "king" should have.

He has deliberately depicted the image of the enemy of the feudal class such as the "king" according to his own imagination.

But whenever Gu Weijing put down the pen, he listened to the sound of Mr. Sloth reading in his ears.

There is always a sense of disconnection.

It's a very similar feeling when he first tried to do fusion painting last week, as if he was forcibly fusing two different things together.

The last time it was the art styles of the East and the West were kneaded.

And this time, it is forcibly trying to stuff a character that does not belong to a fairy tale character into the body of the "king".

The only thing to be thankful for may be.

Mr. Sloth's soft reading voice carries a reassuring and tranquil power. When he was painting, he encountered setbacks, and disappointment was inevitable, but he didn't feel so impulsive that he couldn't continue painting.

"Detective Cat Lady, what's wrong with you, right?"

Presumably hearing the frequent tearing of paper coming from the microphone here, Mr. Sloth finally stopped reading, and the two-hour reading made his voice seem a little more hoarse.

"Well, I'm sorry, I can't find the feeling."

Gu Weijing was really a little embarrassed.

"I really tried hard, but the personalities of these characters are so complex, like onions, peeling off layer after layer. Wikipedia says that this guy is arrogant and cowardly. ”

"I really can't grasp the scale, the painting is very fragmented."

"Forget the encyclopedia." Mr. Sloth said suddenly.

"What?"

"Forget about wikis, forget about Google Q&A, forget about book review discussions on Goodreaders. Forget about all the character analysis you're looking for. ”

"Why?"

"If you want to draw a moving work, you have to really go into the inner world of the book, which is very good for outsiders, but it is not good." Mr. Sloth said.

"Detective Cat Lady, what kind of character is the King in your mind?"

"An arrogant and hypocritical incompetent aristocracy?"

Gu Weijing still subconsciously answered with the metaphor of the character on Wikipedia.

"What kind of person do you think of as a nobleman?" Mr. Sloth asked.

"I don't know."

Gu Weijing shook his head, this word was too far away, he could basically only see it in history textbooks and in the TV wedding broadcast by Prince Harry of Great Britain around the world.

How could he know what kind of person a nobleman was?

"Hmm...... Have you read Proust's "Reminiscences" or Leibrund's "France"? Mr. Sloth asked suddenly.

"No, the latter hasn't even heard of it." Gu Weijing shook his head.

He had heard of "Reminiscences", but he had never even heard the name of the book in the back.

It was the winner of the Prix Goncourt, the most important literary award of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Both books are rich in the daily life of the aristocracy. ”

"The aristocracy is actually a very boring group of people, especially some country lords who are far away from political life in peacetime. They didn't have to fight or work, and their daily life consisted of riding horses, hunting, attending various salons, going to the theater to watch plays, and getting actresses and courtesans to their beds. Mr. Sloth said coldly.

Ooh!

Gu Weijing's eyebrows jumped wildly.

Where is boring, every day life is to go to various places to play, and when you are tired of playing, you will sleep with beautiful girls.

This kind of life is boring,

Do you have a conscience?

"Sounds corrupt and depraved!" Gu Weijing said with a sigh.

"It's just very corrupt and depraved, but these days, too much, will be boring. Sounds arrogant, right? But hunting, horse racing, sleeping with women, gossiping, you start from your teens and enter the social season, until you are old and don't even have the strength to sleep with a girl, every day life is these four things back and forth, too much, you will also feel bored. ”

"The vast majority of the old-school aristocracy is not a good thing, nor is it a bad thing. They're just tired and bored, and they don't care about anything but family honor that is higher than their lives. ”

Mr. Sloth said.

"In "Red and Black", Prince Korasov teaches the protagonist how to pretend to be a nobleman, that is, never get angry, pretend to be tired all day long, because you are a big nobleman, you have ridden the fastest horse, there is a whole troupe at home to perform for you, and you can't even count the number of beautiful women you have slept with. You've enjoyed all the best pleasures in the world, and you're not interested in anything. ”

"It's a real annoying life, isn't it?"

Mr. Sloth whispered, as if he were just talking to himself.

Without waiting for Gu Weijing to answer, Mr. Sloth continued.

Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince, was born into a wealthy Parisian family, and from the thirteenth century onwards, his family was home to many French army generals, and his mother came from a prominent family of scholars. Although Saint-Exupéry was deeply influenced by the Enlightenment, which was equal for all, he certainly knew what the true aristocracy was. ”

"Detective Cat Lady, have you ever wondered why the King was made to be such a person?"

Mr. Sloth asked.

(End of chapter)