The Versatile Master Artist

The poster is slightly taller than an average person, approximately two meters high and half as wide, making it a large promotional page.

It is printed on polyethylene resin.

Resin is not a high-end printing material due to the differences in ink adhesion and light refraction. The colors on the printed poster differ somewhat from the original color codes in the computer engineering file.

During the printing process, there is also a small amount of color deviation that is hard to correct.

The advantage of resin is its convenience, as the printing cost is very low.

Once printed, it can be placed in a cinema’s window display frame as a movie release preview according to different needs.

Alternatively, as with the Waterstones staff, it can be affixed with adhesive to an aluminum stand and placed on the roadside as a promotional sign.

Hence, it is widely used in the printing industry.

Waterstones staff set up several poster signs stacked on a small trolley, following the queue of people waiting outside the store.

Every few meters, there is one placed.

The staff prepared an array of various posters.

Signs with cursive lettering announcing the [Scholastic Group’s ”Little Prince” new book launch/signing event], large photos of the translator Hawke in a contemplative pose with his hands crossed under his chin, along with his personal biography, and details about the signing event procedures and reminders.

These details are not important.

What truly captivates and silences the crowd is the poster placed at the innermost side of the small trolley facing the queue.

A blown-up book cover of ”The Little Prince”.

The golden desert unfolds slowly under the black night sky, with the little boy sitting sideways on the dune’s top, gazing at the solitary and ethereal starry sky.

A thin layer of silver mist gently covers the Little Prince.

This hazy mystery appears to flow like mercury.

This extraordinary display of artistic power... can it really be created by a human?

With a tool,

that’s merely a stiff painting knife?

Round-faced friend Maca suddenly wondered whether she had misunderstood the rough and amateurish reputation of painting knife art.

Maca could almost feel the cool, moist mist seeping from the promotional poster and brushing against her face.

She couldn’t help but lightly cover her face.

It’s unbelievable!

Desert, starry sky, mist, a solitary prince...

The scene on the poster resembles a luminescent relief against a dark background, creating a unique compressed 3D effect.

”This kind of color rendering effect should be a three-dimensional color overlay technique, possibly similar to the method Manet used when creating ’Olympic’, where external pressure flattens the paint into layers, preserving the depth and realism during the repeated application of thick paint.”

Maca, despite her opinions about Detective Cat, is a top student from the Royal Academy of Arts.

Her art appreciation skills naturally led her to analyze this seemingly complex work.

The more academically trained she is,

the more Maca finds it hard to believe the level displayed in the illustration before her.

Learning to draw from a young age, in the realm of impressionist painters renowned for their refined skills, oil painting masters like Manet would bring out paint textures with intricate brushwork bit by bit.

Here someone delicately captured it with just a rigid painting knife.

This must be a joke!

Thinking of sculpting and engraving on creamy paste-like paint.

This unique feeling that only painting knife art can express is just perfectly presented here.

But that’s not all.

The mystery of this painting is definitely not limited to this.

But Maca can’t continue to analyze further.

Her knowledge of painting knife techniques isn’t sufficient for her to dissect and interpret the deeper information of this painting.

She only has a macro sense of the overall work.

It seems the illustrator is not only conveying the surface elements of the artwork but also expressing a unique storytelling sensation.

The painting knife envelops boundless space and time.

Detective Cat—she isn’t just painting; she’s like a jade merchant observing and refining raw stones, cutting out a microcosm of the universe with the painting knife.

This promotional poster is the window through which readers can observe the fairy tale universe Saint-Exupéry crafted.

On the promotional poster.

The short one-foot gap between the Little Prince and the twinkling pole stars is not two-dimensional ink and paint, but a real universe.

With the starry sky stretching over countless light-years, floating cosmic dust, burning stars, silent black holes, sun and moon cycles, all filled by one profound gaze.

Maca’s thoughts followed that gaze,

drifting thousands of miles away.

The round-faced friend quietly closed her mouth, when her eyes met with it; at that moment, she even forgot what she was initially saying.

No criticism.

No attack.

Maca doesn’t even have the slightest desire to comment.

She just wants to quietly appreciate this tranquil illustration.

In this moment, time itself seems to slow down.

If at this moment, Gu Weijing were standing on Oxford Street here,

he would definitely have a deeper understanding of the phrase ”beauty itself is a form of power” and the effectiveness of legendary skills.

According to exaggerated claims by Italian tabloids, when Audrey Hepburn first walked onto the set of ”Roman Holiday” after being dressed up by her make-up artist, all the men on set fell silent.