The Versatile Master Artist

Choosing the painting knife as a lifelong ambition, he sailed in this shallow sea.

Objectively, this caused Boggs to miss many opportunities.

Throughout his life, paintings of a high level could only fetch around fifty thousand US Dollars, and the most important award he received was the ”Best Painting Innovation Award” at the 2006 Seattle Biennale, a rather insignificant award from a second-tier biennale.

Professor Boggs did have the fortune of participating twice in the New York Art Fair.

The total sales amounted to barely the price of a low-end Porsche 911.

Collectors were uncertain about the future appreciation potential of this non-mainstream painting style, and the response was relatively tepid.

Not to mention comparing with Jean Arnou, a million-dollar illustrator.

His personal achievements paled in comparison to the much younger Lady Anya.

However, it did grant Professor Boggs benefits that mainstream oil painters could rarely obtain.

The oil paint brush was too delicate, intricate, and complicated; the title of ”the first person to use the oil paint brush” was something no mainstream painter dared to imagine.

Even Da Vinci or Picasso would not have critics brave enough to bestow such a title.

Boggs was recognized as ”the first to use the painting knife.”

No one felt this title was too arrogant.

When shareholders of ”Oil Painting” magazine thought about who could authoritatively negate Detective Cat’s artistic attainments in the realm of painting knife, the name that came to mind was this elder professor.

He continued to descend, constantly swimming towards the seabed.

Art is a game of big fish eating small fish, where experience, age competition are sustenance for a painter’s continuous growth.

Half a century is enough to turn a shrimp into a gigantic blue whale.

As his hair turned white, he gradually saw the ultimate end of this technique.

He meticulously compared works of Titian, Edward Jones, and James Whistler, artists adept at using the painting knife to shape within their works, who served as his textbooks and stepping stones during his learning of painting knife technique.

Solely speaking of painting knife technique, they were slightly inferior to him.

Professor Boggs believed he had reached an unprecedented realm in history.

The unseen scenery at the extreme depths was the reward for his efforts.

Unexpectedly.

After nearly twenty years of invincibility, he found himself alongside another figure who even... went further.

”Interesting.”

Professor Boggs put down the painting knife in his hand.

The myriad of thoughts in his mind did not interfere with his painting, and shortly afterwards, the work on the canvas before him was fully formed.

It was a ”Lake Scenery Painting” depicting the scene outside the window.

The beveled trace pressed by the knife blade cleverly transformed into ripples on the water surface, remarkably exquisite.

If someone could observe both the painting process of Professor Boggs and Gu Weijing, who was far away in Yangon,

they would find a strong similarity in the technique and process, disregarding the age difference.

Even the gesture of smearing the painting knife had the same rhythmic sense.

Neither hesitated.

Both smooth and fluent, proficient to the extreme.

Professor Boggs let out a soft hum.

The elder scrutinized the work at his side for a few seconds, then picked up the painting knife again and made a bold move that would drop the jaws of his familiar students in the studio.

He gently used the side of the knife blade to scrape and press the paint at the junction of Jade Lake and the sky, causing the paint to be pushed by external pressure to mix with the texture of the linen canvas.

This was a new technique Professor Boggs had just comprehended, its origin... being that Detective Cat.

Excellent artists are always like clusters of grapes on a vine, appearing one after another.

Historically, outstanding cultural and artistic workers often spontaneously formed small groups, small cliques, appearing in clusters.

Just like Schiller and Goethe, Manet and Monet, Bo Ya and Zhong Ziqi.

Philosophers engaged in verbal battles in publications as naturally as eating and drinking, which in a different form, deeply intertwined their fates.

This was not just because interesting souls would naturally attract each other, but also because the healthy competition among masters inspired their creativity and fulfilled one another.

The improvement of the painting method and technique of ordinary painters relied on diligent practice and rigorous formalized art training.

The enhancement of a painting master’s technique depended on a series of epiphanies and breakthroughs in the face of bottlenecks.

There were numerous charlatans with half-baked painting knife skills, but those known solidly by name were merely one or two cats, big and small.

The downside of being the strongest in a particular technique was that few painters in the same field could qualify to provide him with inspiration.

After turning fifty, he increasingly sought cross-fertilization from other art forms.

Until the appearance of Detective Cat.

It not only put pressure on Professor Boggs but also opened a new world for him.

The newly published ”Little Prince,” which Professor Boggs liked so much that he couldn’t put it down.

After careful study, it was as if he tore through a layer of thin paper, and he laughed heartily in the professors’ lounge of the Brooklyn Art Academy.

It turns out you could paint like this!

It turns out the painting knife could be used in this way!

Professor Boggs, trapped outside the ultimate realm of painting knife for more than a decade, found that ”Little Prince” stealthily opened a crack in the door.

He then easily relied on his strong painting skill to push open the door and behold a sky full of stars.

The professor raised his hand.

Like cream, the paint obediently blended colors under Boggs’s control.