The Versatile Master Artist

Gu Weijing’s drawing is excellent, Shengzi knows that.

It’s just that since Gu Weijing wants to draw with such detail and also wants to exhibit a sense of ease in the lines, the difficulty curve suddenly escalates steeply.

If a pencil stroke goes wrong, it can be erased; if a charcoal stroke goes wrong, it can be gently rubbed away with some bread.

But if there’s an error in a pen line.

You either pretend not to see it and keep drawing, or you throw the drawing away and start over. There’s no third choice.

”No problem, adding a few more sets of hatching, the thin pen has its advantages, no matter how sharp you make a pencil, you can’t achieve such delicate and even lines.”

As he spoke,

Gu Weijing’s pen tip already started weaving the structure of lines according to the plan in his mind, looking confident.

He indeed felt confident inside.

A Tier Two sketch skill is like a substitute forward playing for a bottom team in the Championship.

Not worth too much media attention, yet considered as having entered the ranks in the industry.

As long as it’s within the realm of sketching, no matter what tools are used, there aren’t many painting techniques that could evoke a sense of difficulty in Gu Weijing.

On the contrary, he can start considering crafting more suitable painting strategies tailored to different brushwork techniques based on their characteristics.

The weak are mastered by tools, the strong master the tools, and the masters transform the tools.

Have you ever heard of using a brush to draw sketches?

During the Republic Era, a master from Shanghai Art School developed a ”mixed rendering method,” combining pen lines with the softness of a brush. It broke the traditional binary contrast of black and white in sketches, giving the artwork the delicacy of a pencil sketch and the strength of a pen drawing.

Gu Weijing hasn’t reached the level of transforming tools yet.

He brings out the precision of fine lines with a technical pen, adjusts the density of light and shadow hatching, meticulously handles the darker parts, and uses appropriate white space to emphasize the lighter parts.

He believes he can meet these requirements.

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Time ticked by second by second.

Gu Weijing captured the adorable moment of Jasmine holding the cat, head to head with the tabby cat, gazing at each other.

Ah Wang weighs close to 6 kilograms, and the little girl holding him looks like she’s hugging a sack of flour.

Ah Wang’s two hind legs rest on the ground, and his expression is somewhat ”damn, I don’t want to play along, but I can’t escape, damn it!” showing a slight impatience, with his head tilted to one side, whiskers twitching.

While Jasmine’s eyes are filled with the excitement and joy of successfully petting the cat, a feeling of happiness brimming over, almost sprouting tiny pink hearts from her head.

Gu Weijing naturally and effortlessly read the emotional states of the two individuals.

He started to fully present the volumetric and spatial sense of the figures using suitable and appropriate light and shadow.

He used short pen strokes to sketch Jasmine’s posture holding the cat, employing different levels of cross-hatching techniques to express the different textures of the little girl and the tabby cat’s fur.

Ah Wang’s fur is very distinct, with the facial fur being fine and short, while the body and limbs have fur as long as a pinky finger of a five or six-year-old child.

Silver or black, fine and elongate into strands.

Therefore, the key to rendering its fur is to make it ”loose,” fluffy without being compact, yet not tangled; only such fine strokes as those from a technical pen can fully depict this fur.

Compared to the tabby cat, Jasmine’s skin is much smoother.

Although the little girl is a bit dark-skinned, she reflects more indoor light than the furry cat.

This makes Jasmine’s figure appear brighter to the human eye.

So Gu Weijing used slanted straight lines to show Jasmine’s details, with some areas simply using white space to indicate highlights.

Drawing with a technical pen saves the hassle of sharpening pencils and constant revisions, the sheer number of lines is less compared to using a pencil, making the process mentally taxing, but the drawing time not overly long.

After about several dozen minutes passed.

Except for the moment when he had to change for a new pen due to the ink running out, Gu Weijing smoothly completed all the hatching.