The Versatile Master Artist

”It’s really like the system’s serial mission named ’Sea of All Rivers’; the reward for this task is watercolor painting skills? Actually, it’s not bad when you think about it.”

Gu Weijing is not too unfamiliar with watercolor painting.

Watercolor painting and colored pencil drawing have certain similarities,

When he uses Menzel’s skills to draw with colored pencils, even though the main improvement is in sketching, he also gains around ten to twenty points of experience in watercolor painting.

With the common ground in their techniques,

it’s like working out at the gym, doing squats with a Smith Machine. Even if your main intent is to train your thighs, the strength in your waist and abdomen will also be enhanced correspondingly.

It’s rare to find a fitness enthusiast with a waist as thin as a stick, yet possessing the limb strength of Schwarzenegger.

Painting is a holistic endeavor,

Your experience with color, line, and structure will have an impact on other categories as well, albeit to varying degrees.

However,

on Gu Weijing’s current painting dashboard, only printmaking Technique at Level 2 [Beginner (96/100)] and watercolor painting at Lv.3 [Semi-Professional (219/1000)] stand out, clearly short of the mark compared to Chinese Painting, sketch, and oil painting.

It’s fine that printmaking Technique proficiency is relatively low,

Anyhow, Gu Weijing believes that he won’t be focusing much on printmaking Technique for now,

It’s not that the potential of printmaking Technique isn’t high enough, but often this technique is intended for engraving art on copper or wooden plates, prepared for large-scale reproduction and printing. Usually, it’s not too late to study printmaking Technique once you’ve truly become famous.

During the peak of pop art from the 1970s to around 2010,

A whole bunch of pop artists like Andy Warhol, Takashi Murakami, etc., loved to incorporate printmaking Technique into their creation process in their later works. Mass production, each piece selling for millions or even tens of millions US Dollars, they made enough money on the art market to buy a Ford-class aircraft carrier.

However,

For ordinary artists, printmaking Technique still has inherent drawbacks—it’s not detailed enough and cannot express intricate layers of color.

If the craftsman’s printing skills are subpar, the work... really would be just for show.

Historically, during Japan’s Meiji Restoration, goods sold to Europe included ukiyo-e prints as packaging for Japanese industrial products, but their actual appearance was quite coarse.

If you’re not a top-notch art master,

Whether participating in art biennials or dealing in the first and second tier trading markets, collectors and judges have reservations about ’mass-producible’ artworks; the enthusiasm isn’t particularly high.

Thus, in the entire realm of painting styles, printmaking Technique is regarded as relatively unimportant.

To artists and art students, printmaking Technique is like a dessert on the table; painting it well is naturally impressive, but inability to paint it isn’t too problematic.

Watercolor painting is different; it’s like the main course, steak or risotto.

Vivid colors, elegant brushwork.

Although watercolor does not possess the varied textures of oil paint, its images are more fluid and translucent, fresh and real in appearance, with better color extendibility than oil-based pigments.

If oil painting is the king of Western painting, the queen’s throne would surely belong to watercolor painting.

For Gu Weijing and other Fitz art students,

printmaking Technique and pen-and-ink classes are half-semester electives mainly for understanding. Watercolor is, like sketch and oil painting, a compulsory subject studied from a young age.

”Thinking about it, I’m quite looking forward to it. I wonder if Menzel’s Painting Basics can be combined with this skill; this old fellow’s watercolor paintings are quite famous.” Gu Weijing murmured to himself.

Watercolor painting was invented in Germany and flourished in the United Kingdom.

In the Western painting field, especially before the twentieth century, if a painter is praised by high society as a great artist, there are only two possibilities.

This painter would either be an oil painter or a watercolor painter.

Other types of painting like pen-and-ink or paper-cut paintings tended to be considered inferior to these elite art forms.

In many cases, watercolor masters and oil painting masters were even the same group of people.

Oil painting and watercolor painting are the left and right hands of Western artists; Menzel, Turner, Picasso... these people all belonged to the great painters adept in both oil and watercolor painting.

This reward indeed provides a good supplement to the lack of watercolor painting experience in front of Gu Weijing.

’The previous reward was Lang Shining’s Painting Technique, and this reward is watercolor painting. The system arrangements are quite interesting; I wonder what the next reward will be?’

Thinking about this, Gu Weijing suddenly felt curious.

Lang Shining not only pioneered the integration of Chinese and Western oil painting.

This missionary from Milan is often thought by posterity to be the first to bring watercolor painting to the East.

In the mid Qing Dynasty, he introduced watercolor painting to Dongxia, adding a new color to Eastern Art, just 300 years ago.

The successive task rewards from the system seem to follow the veins of the history of Eastern Art with great elegance.

”Mr. Xiao Gu?”

Uncle Ah Lai had just started the Elantra, and while Gu Weijing was staring at the system tasks lost in thought, the car suddenly slowed down again.

”Someone is calling us, should we stop?” Uncle was looking at the road ahead, his hand resting on the steering wheel as he asked.

A bald man, with a cigarette in his mouth, was leaning against a champagne-colored BMW car door at the intersection, waving towards Gu Weijing as if trying to flag down a cab.