"Just hang out and throw a handful of bait."

The godfather of the underworld disagreed: "It's the best if you win, it doesn't matter if it doesn't work." ”

The bald head nodded,

Before he turned to leave, he couldn't help but ask, "Don't you really need my subordinates to tie him up?" and it will not hurt him. The Golden Triangle drug lord likes to use injected heroin to control informants, and after getting it, he is guaranteed to be more obedient than a dog. Kill your father without blinking, you don't like this method, Brother Hao, but a middle school student, you don't need to take medicine, you can be honest if you are hungry for two or three days. ”

"It means that you still don't understand."

The smile on Brother Hao's face was full of long.

He held a handful of fish food and slowly reached into the ornamental tank, shaking it while slowly opening his palm.

"This is still the idea of raising ordinary carp. Artist, what you want is this precious heart, if you drug him, this person will be abolished. If you don't give him food, if you are hungry, you will be hungry, and this spirit may be gone. ”

"If you want to pinch this koi in your hand, you can't use a hook, let alone a speargun or harpoon. If you knock it, if you hurt it, if you touch it, it's not worth a few dollars. ”

"You have to use the bait slowly, be patient, and be willing to do this. In order to pinch Mr. Xiao Gu's full beard and tail obediently in his hands. ”

Brother Hao slowly exerted force, pinching the three-color koi that was eating bait in his hand and squeezed it firmly in his hand.

Crash......

The carp came out of the water and flicked its tail frantically, but it couldn't move.

"Don't worry, he won't be able to escape."

The middle-aged man smiled.

……

[Will I be able to fly freely like a bird one day?] 】

[Is it a moment, sunrise and sunset? 】

[Or in a week, a hundred weeks, a thousand weeks?] 】

[Or is it a round of spring and autumn, after the sea withers and the rocks rot? 】

【……】

Gu Weijing gently sketched with the tip of a fountain pen, the figure of a little boy wearing a golden scarf, sitting on the beach and watching the stars.

In the computer stereo next to me, there was the sound of ethereal music accompanied by a small tambourine.

For some reason,

Mr. Sloth seems to have recently hoped that Gu Weijing could speed up the progress of painting, and he has increased the time he spends reading for more than half an hour every day.

The book "The Little Prince" is not thick in the first place.

The selected key passages have been read to the end.

Today, Mr. Sloth has changed the way he connects.

He didn't read certain passages to himself again, as he had done in the past.

Instead, Gu Weijing played the theme song of the French cartoon "The Little Prince" with the highest rating on IMDB in the animation category in 2015 - "Equation".

"The protagonist of a fairy tale is the sum of all the characters in the story. I think, at some point, that the singing may be more penetrating than the voluminous text, Detective Cat Lady, do you see the shadow of the little prince in your heart? ”

On the other end of the computer, Anna pauses the sound of music.

She has always liked the theme song of this cartoon, ethereal and full of fairy tales,

Of all the music adapted from The Little Prince, Anna is actually the most favorite of the 2002 version of the French stage musical, followed by this song.

The soundtrack style of the musical is a bit more quaint.

When she was a little girl, she was once taken by her aunt to see the live version of this stage musical in the VIP box of the Opéra Garnier in Paris.

Today, there is still a collection of vinyl records from Sony for this set of musicals in the study.

But

That stage play was too long.

Illustrations should be concise, easy to understand, and eye-catching, which coincides with the essence of popular music.

Even if the plot of the cartoon is compared with the original work of Saint-Exupéry, there are many elements of subjective adaptation by the director, and the lyrics themselves are quite suitable for the artistic temperament of "The Little Prince" itself.

So Anna thought about it for a long time, and still chose this song "Equation" for the detective cat sister.

Anna's phone ringtone is this song.

If it weren't for the fact that her original voice was not suitable for appearing at this time, she would have even preferred to sing this tune for Detective Cat Lady herself.

Gu Weijing glanced at the sketch and nodded with satisfaction.

"Well, I think I've captured the fairy tale images of all the characters in The Little Prince. I should be able to draw the cover picture. ”

Cover painting,

The Scholastic Group's requirements were not complicated and were similar to those chosen for most The Little Prince publication covers or movie posters.

"The background is a desert, and the main character, the little prince, is looking up at the stars." - This is stated in the document instruction in the contract.

The little prince watching the stars in the desert can be said to be the most classic public impression of the character of the little prince.

Don't look at the cover of the request for a manuscript is very simple,

Mr. Sloth asked him to put the painting at the end of the task.

It is necessary to have a deep concept of all the characters, and only after having a firm grasp of the characters can you start writing.

The cover art is the most critical one for book publishing illustrations, which is equivalent to the face of a beauty model and the trailer of a commercial movie.

Whether an illustration can attract an audience or not depends mostly on a cover.

If the cover is messed up, even if it is painted as a flower, you can't save it.

For this cover art alone, the publisher quoted a whopping $25,000, almost one-fifth of the total remuneration for the contract.

"Very well, I believe in your ability, can you give me this cover art by the end of the week?" Mr. Sloth asked.

"Actually, it should be okay today. Anxious, aren't you? Gu Weijing heard that there seemed to be something else in the other party's tone.

The project team of the publishing house "The Little Prince" has been urging Anna repeatedly.

Illustration takes no time.

On the side of the Willein studio, the cover illustration was handed over to the group on Monday.

The whole printing project cycle is already in a hurry, and they are urging the detective cat to hurry up here.

Anna didn't tell the detective cat the news.

She didn't even mention that "the illustration studio will be in the competition", which she didn't mention to her own artists.

As long as the detective cat plays normally, she can't see the possibility of losing.

Anna believes that a qualified agent should withstand the pressure at this time, and not let this kind of bad things affect the creative state of the painter.

"It's okay, you can come at your own pace, draw with peace of mind, and I'll take care of the rest." Anna replied lightly.

After Gu Weijing hung up the Internet phone, he stared at the line of the protagonist Little Prince who had just completed in his hand and sketched it, and thought quietly for a few minutes.

He was not in a hurry to start writing immediately.

With the illustrations of those fairy tale characters in the early stage, Gu Weijing is already very familiar with the entire painting process.

Mr. Sloth reads for himself, he draws line sketches of people, and he turns these pen drawings into knife drawings on canvas with splashes of ink.

Just follow this streamlined operation.

Gu Weijing will soon be able to harvest a delicate knife painting of the [Heart Feeling] level.

However, after drawing so many knife illustrations, Gu Weijing is a little less satisfied with this level of work.

In his mind, Cao Lao used a brush to put the finishing touch, and on a very ordinary wall, he painted the mysterious effect of the Bodhisattva opening his eyes and the hundred ghosts retreating.

This kind of master's handwriting does not need the help of calligraphy and painting appraisal at all.

Any onlooker who saw that scene could clearly feel the shocking visual impact.

There are even monks in robes who meditate on the spot and become enlightened.

This is the grandmaster-level painting skill, and the greatness is not only the skill, but also the thoughts and emotions.

Gu Weijing believes that he has the blessing of legendary knife painting, and the level of skill is no longer an obstacle to expressing this moving effect.

His shortcomings are still emotional.

If you want to make the picture have enough emotional impact, it is not enough to just feel it based on empathy.

Gu Weijing needs a more moving emotional rating.

He opened the virtual panel and looked at the next stage on the mood meter pointer.

Dedicated......

At the end of the day, what is the painstaking effort?

Gu Weijing came to the studio, put the little prince's line drawing aside, and prepared the drawing board as usual.

Only this time, he did not start painting immediately, but stood silently against the blank canvas for a long time.

ponder

Constant thinking,

Gu Weijing stared at the line drawing of the little prince, hesitated for a moment, and then took out the sketch of the king, the sketch of the rose, the sketch of the fox, and then the drunkard, the bread tree, and the astronomer from the sketch folder in the cabinet......

With the little prince as the center, he put aside all the line drawings that had accumulated these days.

The characters in these illustrations may look majestic, or cute or shy and sensitive.

The works are lined up around the Little Prince. The characters on each sketch paper seem to be talking to the little prince.

The protagonist of a fairy tale,

It is always the character with the richest plot, the most profound theme, and the most difficult to grasp in fairy tales.

The very divine sense of a book has to be seven or eight points will converge on the protagonist.

"The protagonist of a fairy tale is the sum of all the characters in the plot."

Gu Weijing repeated in his mind the words that Mr. Sloth told him, and gradually emerged with new creative inspiration.

Gu Weijing slowly picked up the oil painting knife.

He wanted to paint in a different way to portray the little prince who liked to wander the stars.

Think about it

The little boy wanders alone in the vast universe, meeting strange strangers one after another among the miniature stars no larger than the size of a cottage house.

The king who wants to make the little prince a minister, the sensitive tsundere secretly likes his roses, and the little fox who wants to be domesticated......

They are all weird and lonely.

Everyone's encounter and separation with the little prince has left their own projection on him.

When the little boy sat in the desert and looked at the stars, what was on his mind?

The home of the asteroid codenamed B162? Or those shining stars, those of his friends?

Gu Weijing used an oil painting knife to pull out the black sky on the paper, and then used the side of the knife to point out the stars in the sky with bright paint, followed by the sand sea in the distance.

The desert is like gold dust, and the stars are as bright as silver.

The little prince sat on his side on a sand dune and looked up at the universe, the silver starlight shining from the sky, leaving a long projection stretched on the sand sea.

Gu Weijing looked back on his previous feelings when he painted the inhabitants who lived on the stars in the sky. On the one hand, layers of extremely thin and fine pigments pressed by a painting knife are used to repeatedly lay out the shadow of the little prince under the starlight.

In the past, when he drew the characters in the "The Little Prince" series, he would only focus on the single emotion of the character.

or arrogant, or sensitive, or confused......

These emotions are all empathy for a certain mental state of the character, and they are also the cornerstone of making the picture expressive and make the audience have a sense of communication.

It's like a cup of sour or sweet drink.

But a truly living character will never have only some kind of pure happiness or sadness, an emotion that can be summed up in a single word.

Everyone's mood all the time is made up of many complex emotions.

Just like a cup of tea, the bitterness, astringency and sweetness of herbs ...... All kinds of aftertastes are twisted into a fresh fragrance.

The Buddha said that mortals have five aggregates and seven emotions, joy, anger, sorrow, thought, sadness, fear, and shock, and are always entangled by the seven emotions and six desires like wool, and cannot be liberated.

Psychology believes that feelings are actually as complex as an onion, peeling back one layer and another layer.

Gu Weijing tried to integrate the impressions of all past characters into the silhouette of the little prince,

Just like in a fairy tale,

The projection of these figures on the little boy.

thereupon

The painting really seems to be coming to life.

As Gu Weijing painted, on the virtual panel that he didn't pay attention to, the emotional pointer began to quietly climb, from the area that pointed to the [Heart Feeling], and slowly rose again.

The little prince on the sand dunes was born with a "life".

In the picture, the person sitting on the beach is still the little boy looking up at the starry sky.

But the little prince seems to have become more agile, as if he has the illusion that he is about to turn his head and speak to you at any moment.

People often use the word "lifelike" to describe the artist's skill.

Reality is not anime, painters are not magicians, and the works created can't really come to life.

however

The fact that the work feels alive and can come to life at any time as if it has a soul is real.

Art textbooks tell you that the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, no matter how you look at it, the lady with her arms on her chest seems to be looking at the visitor.

The special visual effects of the Mona Lisa also form part of the legend of Leonardo da Vinci.

sensory illusions triggered by paintings or sculptures,

It is also a classic bridge in the stories of the East and the West, the city through the ages.

The characters in the oil paintings speak to you, the sculptures in the opera house sing in the middle of the night, and the spirit of the wild fox and ghost in Pu Songling's painting in "Strange Tales from Liaozhai" resides in the portrait on the wall.

Of course, this is all due to the rich emotions that the creator has given to the work.

Rigorous modern science interprets these conditions as visual deviations caused by the painter's delicate compositional proportions.

The various auditory hallucinations and fantasies are the subtle chemical effects of the audience's inner emotions and the painter's emotions, which make people's hearts pound and mistake the artwork for a living thing.

This is also the reason why some people with mental illness, delusion, autism, or who have just fallen out of love enjoy art exhibitions more.

Their emotions are more turbulent and they are more easily touched by the vitality of the artwork.

At this moment,

There was a wave of vitality sprouting like a sapling on the oil canvas in front of Gu Weijing.

(End of chapter)