Dongxia culture and art pay the most attention to the four words "meaning and wonder energy", and believe that the charm and spirit of a person's life will be pinned on the objects he carries with him.

So from ancient times to the present,

The aristocrats like to raise jade pendants, the tea ceremony masters like to warm the purple clay pot, and even the old men in the alleys now like to play with beeswax, bracelets, walnuts or something.

The brush is the place where the spirit of a painter is sustenance.

A bamboo pen, from father to son, son to grandson, endlessly, has a long history.

Brushes and famous ink, the service life can be as long as hundreds of years or even thousands of years, some well-preserved unearthed Song and Yuan Dynasty antique brushes, even without maintenance can be directly used to write books and paint.

Even if the tip of the wolf or sheep hair is easy to wear, it is not troublesome to ask a master craftsman to make up for it.

"When my father handed me this mahogany box, he told me that there are three kinds of Chinese painting brushes: the Wenyu jade pen with mutton fat white jade or jade as the pen body, and the bamboo and wood brush with wood or bamboo as the pen body."

"Which one do you guess is best?" Gu Tongxiang raised his eyebrows and asked.

Gu Weijing knew that there was a deep way in the Chinese painting brush.

However, children don't need very good pens.

The brushes he usually uses are the kind of modern pens that are 20,000 kyats a piece and throw them in the trash can with bald hair, so they are not so particular.

At this time, he glanced at the bamboo tube brush in the box in front of him, hesitated for a moment, and tentatively guessed: "Probably a bamboo pen?" ”

"Hmph, dishonest, clever."

The old man saw his grandson's eyes, patted the back of Gu Weijing's head, and blew his beard: "What you say is true and conscience, how can a bamboo pen be more expensive than a jade pen?" A small piece of famous jade can be exchanged for a large bamboo forest. When your great-grandfather asked me, I was much more honest than you, and thought that the jade pen was the best. ”

"And then?" Gu Weijing was curious.

"And then ah......"

The old man recalled the past, and he laughed slowly.

Gu Tongxiang looked at the painting box in front of him and said softly: "Then I was knocked on by your grandfather, sighing at the unfortunate door of the house, and the smell of copper was all over my body. Alas, at that time, the poor in the family were about to eat, and the old man was sick and dying in bed, but he was still the sour breath of the old literati, and he deserved to be poor all his life. ”

The old man obviously said sarcastic words about the elders, but his expression was full of incomparable remembrance and warmth, and there were even tears flashing in his eyes.

The scene when the old-fashioned and square father handed over this mahogany painting box to Gu Tongxiang, who was still a hairy young man, is still vivid in his mind now, as if it was yesterday.

But in the blink of an eye, half a century has passed.

The elders have long since become a small loess tombstone, and even their own grandchildren are so big.

The old man shook his head lightly and looked at Gu Weijing.

"Actually, you answered very well, I just want you to have a long memory and know the preciousness of this set of brushes."

"Remember, when you hand over the mahogany box to your child in the future, you should also tell him that the jade pen is the most expensive brush for Chinese painting, but the bamboo pen is the best."

Gu Tongxiang recalled the scene when his father handed over the set of pens to him, and said: "Most of the jade brushes are yamen such as the Imperial Interior Office, and the specially made imperial pens are hard in nature, and there are uneven patterns on the surface, which are very beautiful, but they are not comfortable to hold." ”

Emerald pens are usually the most expensive category on the antique brush auction market.

In the storytelling stories, you can hear at every turn, and most of the royal pens in the rhetoric of "Yubi pro-mention" or "Yubi pro-seal" are made of jade.

In the past two years, in the trading market, the royal jade brush engraved with dragon patterns in the Yongzheng or Qianlong period can easily cost millions of yuan.

But the jade pen barrel is not elastic,

When this kind of brush is written, there is a lack of communication with the paper, and the symbolic attributes of the ritual are greater than the practical attributes, and the Qianlong Emperor does not use the jade pen in his daily poems.

It's a completely collectible cultural relic,

Buyers of this kind of pen are locked in a safe waiting to increase their value, and they have never heard of a collector who took it home to write and paint.

The rest are wooden pens and bamboo pens.

"Some calligraphers like to use wooden pens, but the court painters believe that the wooden pen is dry, not as expressive as the bamboo pen, and the material in the bamboo pen is the first in the old Wu land Fugong dragon bamboo, and the five pens in front of you are made from this."

Gu Tongxiang stared at the set of brushes in the painting box, as if he was looking at some peerless beauty.

"For the sake of the scriptures, do you know where the most precious place of this set of pens is?"

Old Man Gu gently picked up a medium-sized brush the thickness of an adult's index finger and showed it to his grandson.

"This is called Qin Yuse, according to our jargon, this set of pens has been raised, and there is a god."

This brush is straight throughout,

The first half of the pen body is in more contact with the artist's fingers, and it is actually green and turquoise, which is obviously a bamboo tube pen, but it has a bright luster like jade, and it has completely become jade.

"This is the heart of an old pen, which is very rare. When the Fugong dragon bamboo was cut down, it originally showed ginger yellow, but legend has it that the painter took this kind of brush to paint, and after a long time, there will be a touch of such emerald color from the pen shaft, and the longer the time, the deeper the emerald color. ”

Gu Tongxiang smiled.

Scientifically this phenomenon is explained by the chemical effect of the plant fibers of old bamboo over a long period of time between the warmth of human skin oil and the oxidation of air.

But

The court painters' accounts were even more romantic.

"My father told me that this jade color is where the spirit of generations of ancestors is located, and every time they paint a painting, the dark brush and ink pigment will slowly dip up along the barrel of the pen, and the yellow bamboo pen barrel will be stained into jade, so the 'jade color' is often called 'ink cui' or 'heart and blood color' in the mouths of old painters."

Gu Weijing's gaze swept over the mahogany painting box.

In the box, the delicate outline pen and two small brushes as thick as a baby's little finger have been completely dipped into a bright green color, and the medium-sized brush in the old man's hand is almost all green.

Only the largest brush used to paint freehand splashed landscape paintings still has a distinct loess color, but a third of it shows the characteristics of jade.

"A painter, in spring, summer, autumn and winter, can only raise the color spots under the size of rice grains all year round. A piece of jade the size of a fingernail will take ten years. Grow into what you see, without two or three Jiazi's pen cultivation, don't even think about it. ”

"In the past, there was an old bamboo pen, known as a hundred taels of snowflake silver."

Speaking of the family heirloom brush, the old man's tone was a little proud.

"I don't say how expensive things are, but now antique pens are common on the market, and this kind of old pens that are used are almost extinct. It is true that Mr. Cao Xuan is the premier master of Taishan Beidou painting, but he is afraid that it is difficult for him to have such a set of family heirloom old brushes. ”

"Cao Lao is probably envious."

Gu Weijing knew that although grandpa's words had the ingredients of Wang Po selling melons and boasting about herself, there were at least seven points of the truth.

People can raise pens, and pens can also raise people.

In fact, the brush is very much like a musical instrument,

The sound of an antique violin made by the legendary $10 million luthier Stradivari and a handmade violin made by one of the best luthiers of our time, worth $100,000.

At least not as exaggerated as the $9.9 million price difference.

But any world-class violinist will always choose only antique violin to play. Some symphony orchestra principal violins have been passed down from 1750 to the present day.

You have a famous piano in your hand, and your mentality is different.

The same goes for brushes.

With a purchasing power of about $100, you can easily buy a brushes that are absolutely above the average level in a stationery store.

The reason why painters buy painting tools that are more than ten times or even hundreds of times the price is not that there is any essential difference in painting, but that they hold a pen of $100 and a pen of $10,000, and their emotional state is different.

Just like a Japanese oil painter who used to use only a certain brand of expensive natural mineral pigments, there was also a well-known illustrator who claimed to only use the German Pelikan (Pelikan ) to give him his private custom platinum pen illustrations.

Either they have a private agency agreement with the painting dealer, or they are pursuing this feeling, this tone.

You can even understand it as vanity, but positive vanity.

Expensive paintings have an emotional bonus that comes with wealth, and when you hold a pen, you feel even better.

The selling point of all luxury painting furniture dealers is often not the craftsmanship, but the story.

For example, Lukes, a master painting tool manufacturer that Lao Yang gave to Gu Weijing, will always have the slogan on his official website that Van Gogh likes to use our painting tools.

The company's main focus is on the emotional value of "if you buy our painting tools, you will be closer to the big artists" to attract art students who are not bad for money to buy.

Judge rationally, with Van Gogh's financial state back then, what good painting tools could he buy.

For Chinese painting artists,

Holding a set of old pens in his hand is the calm and stable power that can naturally bring to his heart, like some kind of blessing Buff.

The masters of Chinese painting who grew up in Oriental culture may be able to regard money as dung and gold, silver and jewelry as nothing.

Three meals a day, tea and light rice, the master of coarse linen clothes has, but I have never heard of anyone who wants to take the initiative to use pen, ink, paper and inkstone of very bad quality.

This kind of family heirloom old pen, Cao Lao knows, and he may indeed envy it.

And not just because of the age and quaintness of the old brushes.

The emotional connection and soul twist brought about by this bloodline inheritance have no effect on a painter's mood that can be compared to the vanity stimulation brought by those high-end painting tools inlaid with gold and silver launched by Western-style luxury companies.

Not an order of magnitude at all.

The ancestors are the gods who protect future generations in the Eastern Xia culture.

Even if Gu Weijing just looks at this set of brushes, he can feel a kind of religious solemnity and solemnity.

Like a bright moon in the depths, I suddenly heard the bell ringing in the middle of the night, and the sound of the old monk singing scriptures came from afar, with a kind of peaceful power.

Let's just put it this way.

With this set of strokes, as long as it is not the reason for the painting itself, it may be difficult to take the initiative to get a perfunctory evaluation.

This is the serene power of the spirit.

"Look, your grandfather, my grandfather...... All the ancestors are looking at the descendants of this generation of the Gu family. ”

Gu Tongxiang turned off the spotlight in the room and took out the candlestick from the cabinet.

Myanmar's electricity supply is not very stable, not only is the Good Luck Orphanage not connected to the power grid, but the bustling tourist area where Gu's calligraphy and painting shop is located occasionally loses power, and every house has candlesticks and candles.

The old man lit the candle with a lighter.

Gu Tongxiang pinched the pen with his fingers, carefully approached the candle lamp on the side, the flame jumped, and the bamboo pen was like jade, reflecting the old man's entire fingers into a deep pool of dark green.

The surface of Fugong dragon bamboo originally has a natural eye-like pattern,

Maybe it's an illusion, between the flickering lights,

It's really like the ancestors of the past hundred years, looking at the descendants of the Gu family of this generation through this small brush.

"They're yours, take them and paint."

"This ...... It's too precious. ”

Gu Weijing even didn't dare to take the pen from his grandfather.

He doesn't care how much it's worth,

Lao Yang's painting tools, Gu Weijing also uses them very easily every day, there is no pressure, if it is just a luxury, it is better, and it is the same thing if there is not.

It's really lost, and the smile is over,

If you have the money, you can buy it.

The things passed down by the ancestors, if he has a mistake in his daily life, it is really a sin that cannot be made up by gold and silver.

"There's no need to be stressed, the crockpot will inevitably break, even if it is broken while painting, it is a better destination for the paintbrush than ashes in the safe, and the ancestors will not blame you."

Old Man Gu first comforted him.

He thought about it, but still turned his head uncomfortably and warned: "Of course, that's what I said. If I find out that you don't love it, or you bump it, see if I can pump you. ”

"By the way, the official symbol of the first-class painter or something, it's just a thought. But you can also use the seal on your own calligraphy and painting. You don't have your own personal seal yet, so it's time to use it officially. ”

Oil painting talks about signatures, and Chinese painting talks about seals.

The seal is the most important personal mark of the Tangut culture.

Until now, personal seals are more important than autographs, and almost everyone has their own seal.

In calligraphy and paintings,

It is divided into the "Introduction" at the head of the work, the "Border Chapter" that determines the boundary of the drawing paper, and the "Presser Foot Chapter" that represents the status symbol, or also called the "Closing Chapter".

There are also finer annual chapters, solar term chapters, etc., which belong to the cover if you want to, and don't cover if you don't want to.

The three mutton fat white jade medals have already put together the basic types of seals.

Put this set on Chinese painting rice paper or silk silk, and it will be marked with Gu's personal imprint.

In modern times, Chinese painting painters are actually not so particular, and the rules have become a lot more streamlined.

"When I was young, I only used the chapter of "Diligence and Self-reliance", and the remaining two chapters of "Master Gu" and "Writing with God", I felt that the meaning of these two chapters was insulted by stamping my work, so I never touched them. I hope that one day, you Gu Weijing will feel that you can cover these three chapters on your works without blushing and heartbeat, and you are worthy of your ancestors and ancestors. Old Man Gu said.

(End of chapter)