Almighty painter

Chapter 678 Now
"I'm not mocking you. I'm just telling the truth. Everyone should know what they are good at. There are many people who are not good at public speaking. I just said that you acted like a clown, but a clown can still make people laugh. Oh, you haven't heard David Raimondi speak. When he speaks, you want people to pull out their revolvers and shoot him or their own heads, as long as it can end it all."

The banker smiled.

He gently poured a little of the liquid in the glass into his mouth and drank it down with an expression of great enjoyment.

Sir Brown looked a little confused.

"Oh, don't you know who David Raimondi is?" Mr. Kruger noticed his expression. "He is the vice president of the Deutsche Bank Association. When he speaks, his voice sounds like a lousy carpenter hammering nails, but that doesn't stop him from being a successful..."

"Well, I actually wanted to ask, what are you drinking? Vodka?" Sir Brown couldn't help but interrupt the other party. When the banker just came over, he noticed that the drink in the other party's glass was different from that of other guests in the venue.

"This? Mineral water."

"Didn't my son tell you? I only drink mineral water in any situation."

Mr. Kruger shook the champagne glass in his hand.

"Smart people should always keep their brains clear. We Europeans drink too much alcohol and sugar, so we do nothing all day long. We are lazy and have a four-day work week. Ha..." The banker sneered, "I am not surprised why we failed miserably in the electric car market and why we never have our own say in the energy market. Of course, there is also diabetes, Brown, you don't want your toes to fall off one by one from the soles of your feet--"

He noticed from the corner of his eye that Miss Elena was looking at his whispering with Sir Brown.

Kruger smiled.

He interrupted the conversation, turned sideways, raised the glass in his hand to Anna, and said, "Salute to Ms. K."

The banker drank the mineral water in his glass.

He placed the empty champagne glass on the silver tray held by the waiter.

The man then patted Sir Brown on the shoulder again.

"Therefore, my friend, I suggest you drink less and clear your mind. If you treat this as a speech contest or a Miss Europe beauty pageant, then we are doomed to fail. I suggest that we rush over right now, kneel down and kiss Miss Irina's toes. But this is not..."

"So, don't try these clever tricks."

"Let's figure out where our advantages are. Maybe next time we can try to compete with her in a 'race'?"

Kruger whispered to Sir Brown and turned around.

"Oh, my dear niece Anna, I am so happy to meet you. I have specially prepared a gift for you. It was in Berlin last month..." He swaggered out of the crowd, walked enthusiastically to Miss Elena, and bent down to kiss the Countess on the cheek.
-
『Time: 2023.6.27 morning』

"Time remaining until departure of flight to Singapore: +86 hours, 32 minutes and 17 seconds"

"The studio is right here. No one will go in to disturb you. If you have any special requests, please press the call bell at the door."

As the old man in a tuxedo bowed to him, Gu Weijing pushed open the door of the room.

The rising sun shines on the wooden floor of the workshop, turning the ground golden red.

This is the internal studio of Xihe Guild Hall.

After getting up this morning, Gu Weijing sent a WeChat message to his family as usual to report that he was safe and everything was fine, and then told the housekeeper that he needed a quiet place to paint.

It seemed that the butler had been informed in advance.

The old man led the way and brought Gu Weijing here without any hesitation.

It is the base of Hao Ge’s counterfeiting gang.

Gu Weijing was not surprised that there was a painting studio in Xihe Guild Hall.

The strange thing is that this place is much larger than he imagined, and more simple and elegant.

Gu Weijing thought that this place should be like some kind of chemical assembly line factory, with the walls covered with half-finished paintings by Picasso or Heinrich... just like Beltrechi's famous workshop.

The latter is a master of fake paintings in Europe, and together with his girlfriend he forms a pair of great thieves in the field of art forgery.

It is said that Betleitch has a talent that allows him to imitate the brushstrokes of his predecessors almost perfectly. He does not simply imitate the brushstrokes, but rather infers the personality traits, ideas, and inspirations of those famous painters through their paintings.

Even to speculate their mood when they were painting.

In the words of Bethelich, "Like a psychic, I can make the other person's soul come alive in my body. I can use my paintbrush to penetrate the minds of the great painters of hundreds of years ago, and even cry or laugh uncontrollably."

At first, he simply imitated painting styles, imagining the works that famous artists might have painted, or that were recorded in documents but had disappeared in the long river of history, in order to achieve the purpose of bringing their "sequels" and "posthumous works" back to the world.

later.

Betleqi suddenly realized that his paintings were so similar that many collectors and appraisers mistook his imitations for the originals.

So, he realized almost immediately that “we are going to be rich.”

He was responsible for painting, while his girlfriend Helen was responsible for using irons, ovens, and cigarettes to age the paintings, allowing the ink on the brushstrokes to have natural cracks of aging. She then disguised herself as an art dealer, underground middleman, low-key collector, fallen aristocrat, and various buyers to make contact.

Until 2008, when their mistake in choosing titanium white pigment was exposed and they were thrown into jail, the thief pair had made at least $5 million from the counterfeit painting business.

Gu Weijing imagined that he would enter a counterfeiting studio like this.

The air was filled with the pungent smell of turpentine. In the corner was a microscope for observing the degree of aging of the painting, and there were barrels of various semi-finished pigments. On the drawing board were enlarged photos with details of the work to be imitated taped with paper tape. The forgers gathered in front of the photos and whispered about the brushstrokes - as if they were killers looking at the target they were going to assassinate.

Even if there really are thugs with guns, it is not uncommon to see them patrolling and supervising in the studio.

He heard.

Today's most "professional" art counterfeiting teams have a very complex personnel composition. They spend a lot of effort on even the most basic painting pigments, which are mixed entirely by hand by colorists.

It’s not as exaggerated as the scene in the movie “Wushuang” where Chow Yun-fat deals with the color-changing ink.

But there are one or two similar meanings.

In order to imitate the taste of the original work, if the goal is to make a fake painting painted in "1909", the counterfeiting gang will really try to get oil paint produced in the late 1900th century or around 1. Using this as a template, they study the composition and specific process of the paint produced by the painting supplies manufacturers at that time, and then manually mix it 1:.

even.

They would find some old paintings of similar years by less famous but similar-styled painters, wash away most of the original works, and then create a new painting on the old basis.

This is similar to porcelain counterfeiting, where the broken bottom of a real ancient porcelain is used and attached to a later imitation Yuan blue and white porcelain vase.

Considering that once a painting is successfully forged, a single painting can generate millions or even tens of millions of dollars in profit, it is not surprising that people would rack their brains to come up with such a plan.

But there is none of this.

The space that Gu Weijing walked into did not look like a messy underground flour-making factory like in "Breaking Bad". On the contrary, it was a very sophisticated, clean and decent modern creative studio.

Dark linen curtains hung at the windows.

The wooden floor is waxed to amber hue.

There are half-bloomed flowers in the vase.

Gu Weijing sniffed gently and vaguely smelled the scent of lavender.

He walked to the window and opened the curtains completely - the spatial layout of Xihe Guild Hall was magical. Gu Weijing didn't know which part of Xihe Guild Hall the window of this studio faced, but he actually saw a large and continuous lavender field outside the window.

Late June.

The lavender is in full bloom.

Mountain flowers are blooming.

"It's so beautiful."

Gu Weijing sighed softly.

This scene has a sense of time and space distortion. The eastern sunlight paints the lavender a sweet purple. It looks like the world in an artist's painting rather than the home of a counterfeiter.

Gu Weijing couldn't help but think of Picasso.

Picasso's former residence in southern France has a large lavender field, and he also likes to use lavender purple in large areas in his own works.

Françoise Gino, a French female independent artist and Picasso's lover, once told reporters in an interview that lavender and lavender-like women together represent the main colors of a certain period in Picasso's life.

Gu Weijing's gaze shifted sideways.

There happened to be a Picasso-style painting hanging on the wall. It showed an ancient town, and the whole paper was covered with hazy and intoxicating purple.

Out of curiosity, he threw a calligraphy and painting appraisal technique on it.

[Title: Lavender fields in Antibes]

[Sketch Technique: Lv.6 Professional Level 3521 (50000/)]

[Oil Painting Technique: Lv.5 Professional Stage 6758 (10000/)]

[Emotion: Feelings]

Gu Weijing discovered that in addition to the date and time, there was also a passage written in French by the painter directly with an oil brush in the corner of the painting:

"June 2013, 6, Picasso's former residence in Antibes, a small town in southern France. I drove ten kilometers from the beach in Cannes to get here. When I was young, I tried to paint many Picassos, and in the lavender fields blooming all over the mountains, I really saw the world in Picasso's paintings for the first time in my life."

Gu Weijing walked slowly along the wall of the studio.

He found many paintings hanging here.

Their brushstrokes are varied, some look like abstract Picasso, some like light-like Monet, some like foggy Turner, and some like distorted Van Gogh.

There are landscape paintings and figure paintings.

They were all in different styles, but at least the ones hanging in this room... they all looked like original works.

Many picture frames are signed or have various inscriptions on them.

"On January 2009, 1, it rained heavily all night by the Yangon River. Two young people were leaning against the river in the early morning. It looked very warm, but unfortunately, I could see that the boy liked the girl, but the girl didn't really like the boy - "Morning by the River""

"On May 2012, 5, I watched Coppola's Apocalypse Now again. The sunlight in Saigon in the film was like an impressionist painting. Under the sunlight, terror and darkness were everywhere. Perhaps this is the true face of the world... Apocalypse Now may be the last great work of the New Hollywood generation - Sunrise."

"On July 2013, 7, after finishing my business talk, I looked out the window at the night, as if I was looking at an ancient ghost from afar - "Night""

"November 2015, 11..."

"..."

"Oh."

Gu Weijing let out a sigh of emotion.

He understood why the place the butler brought him to was so different from the scene he had imagined.

Because he didn't come to Brother Hao's "counterfeiting workshop".

This is Brother Hao’s own private studio.

These works on the wall are probably paintings that Chen Shenglin draws for his own entertainment.

In the study, he told Gu Weijing that the Elena family was famous for their love of art, and he could also be a person who loved art. Perhaps that was what he really meant.

Just looking at the level of these paintings... Gu Weijing finds it hard to imagine that these are works that an amateur created to amuse himself in his spare time.

Gu Weijing has a social friend named Miss Elena.

If the portrait of the dog on Miss Anna Elena’s social account was drawn by herself and can represent her true painting ability.

To put it bluntly.

Brother Hao's level is much better than that of the head of the Elena family. He is also much better than his grandfather Gu Tongxiang, a "professional old artist".

The techniques at level 6 and 5 are not that earth-shattering, and cannot be said to be at the level of oil painting that can sweep the entire art exhibition if photographed.

But in the serious art field, he can be considered a top figure. With this ability, it is not a problem to sign with an ordinary gallery in Europe. The most important thing is not just the sophisticated brushwork and accurate colors.

The perspective from which the creators of these paintings observe the world is also very interesting.

He seems to have a magical power that can see through people's hearts. He can always freeze the light and shadow of the environment and the changes in the character's expression in a moment directly in his brush.

Hazy and intoxicating purple.

The alienated and bleak sun.

A spooky night.

There are subtle changes in the boy's eyes and eyebrows when he looks at the girl and when the girl looks at the boy.

……

Gu Weijing could imagine how Chen Shenglin put himself into the characters he painted when he was drawing these paintings.

Although none of the works hanging on the walls have reached the level of “painstaking effort”, many of them have reached the level of “feelings from the heart” and are by no means empty descriptions.

Considering that the other party is a fake painter.

perhaps.

This is worthy of being called talented, or at least definitely worthy of being called "gifted".

"What's the difference between me and them? Why am I born different?"

Gu Weijing could hear Brother Hao's questioning voice again.

He walked to the end of the wall and the last painting hung there should be the other party's most recent painting.

It was a realistic oil painting of a figure.

An old man in a suit sat by the blinds, his silver hair combed into a layered backcomb. His eyes and brows still revealed the elegance and unrestrained style of his youth. I believe that the girls at that time looked at him with unspeakable love in their eyes.

But as he grew older, maturity and depth had replaced his former frivolity.

The breath of the superior wrapped tightly around the old man's body.

He was half hidden in the shadows.

The black coat and white shirt formed a very obvious color contrast. The suit almost melted into the shadows around it, but there was a bunch of bright crimson roses inserted in the chest pocket.

Gu Weijing is not a movie fan.

But he recognized it at a glance. The portrait was of the famous Marlon Brando. To be more precise, Haoge painted the famous old godfather Vito Corleone played by Brando in the movie.

This kind of character portraits based on movie star characters are actually quite common in modern galleries.

These are works that customers like to see, understand, and are willing to buy.

With a little personal creativity, you can even skirt the copyright issue.

Not to mention the many artists who paint Iron Man in the United States, the biggest deal that Gu Weijing's calligraphy and painting shop has made in recent years is an oil painting by a French painter who participated in the Brewster Biennial, based on the character "Joker" in "Batman" played by Heath Ledger.

It sold for more than 20,000 US dollars.

Gu Weijing walked over and picked up the label card hanging on the picture frame.

On the white label card, there was only a date and a few words in a short sentence:

"September 2023, 4"

“Life is so beautiful.”

Gu Weijing recited softly, and it was exactly the same as what he expected in his heart.

He turned around and pulled out the easel from the corner of the studio.

In Brother Hao's private studio, even the canvas is stretched directly.

Gu Weijing stood beside the drawing board, looking at "The Godfather" hanging on the wall in front of him.

He stood for a long time.

at last.

He smiled softly.

……

『Time: 2023.6.27 morning』

"Time remaining until departure of flight to Singapore: +84 hours, 57 minutes and 21 seconds"

Gu Weijing stood beside the drawing board.

He has already decided on the theme of the painting, so what style should he choose?

No need to hesitate or worry.

He thought of his perception of light yesterday, of Miss Sakai, of the events of the past six months, and of the true meaning of the colors in Carroll's "Old Church in a Thunderstorm" that he had finally comprehended.

In this case, then...

Logically, this painting should be an impressionist work, only in this way can it match the emotions in his heart at the moment.

If "Old Church on a Thunderstorm" is Ms. Carroll's struggle against fate.

This painting will be his.

Gu Weijing glanced at his system panel.

[Character: Gu Weijing]

Technique Panel——

[Oil Painting Technique: Level 6, Professional Level 2136 (50000/)]

[Sketch Technique: Level 6, Professional Level 10167 (50000/)]

[Chinese Painting Technique: lv.5 Professional Level 9999 (10000/). Note: There is a realm-breaking task to be completed.]

……

Skill Panel——

[Calligraphy and Painting Appraisal: 98 times/1000 times (Upgrade Progress)]

……

Experience value panel——

[Currently available free experience value balance: 3529]

Gu Weijing thought for a moment.

This will be his ultimate painting when facing Brother Hao. The so-called ultimate painting requires one to give his all and leave no room for compromise.

Even if you only have a stone in your hand, you should pick it up and throw it at the other person.

And what he has now is not just stones.

He still has money.

Gu Weijing didn't want Uncle Sakai's family to have anything to do with this matter, so he broke up with Miss Sakai and burned the check for one million dollars that Mrs. Sakai gave him.

But Gu Weijing himself is no longer the child who needs to take the gold coins he received as New Year's money to Miss Mona to exchange for change.

He is quite wealthy.

Strictly speaking, Detective Cat is quite wealthy.

Jane Arnold's illustration studio gave half of the advance payment for the musical "Cats", plus the second payment of sales share for "The Little Prince" that had just come from the publishing house.

They are not small money.

Detective Cat can also be considered a little lucky cat.

Gu Weijing took out his mobile phone, logged into the US dollar account opened for him by the Schönbrunn Palace Office, and checked the balance.

At this time, if he used his Jasmine Foundation's small charity fund to do everything himself, he would obviously not be able to keep up, and by the time he got the experience points, it would be too late.

He opened the official website of the United Nations Children's Fund, randomly selected ten donation projects, and donated US$100 to each of them.

Gu Weijing took a look at the list of free experience points received.

Both are OK.

Gu Weijing picked the one with the highest relative proportion and then chose to make a large donation.

"Ding, your free experience value has arrived +36756!" - a prompt sound came from the system panel.

While Gu Weijing's account balance was shrinking rapidly, he received the largest amount of free experience points since he obtained the system panel.

He glanced at the experience value panel and was not in a hurry to allocate the experience points at hand to either oil painting or sketching.

Tens of thousands of experience points do seem like a lot.

However, compared to the experience bar of the third-level profession with 50000 points, it seems not enough.

Even if it were added to his current strongest skill, sketching, it would still not be enough to reach the level of professional perfection at the third stage.

Fortunately.

Gu Weijing remembered that he still had something hidden in his box that he had not used yet, so he switched the interface of the system panel.

[Muse's Blessing Small Candle * 7]

[Quality: Excellent (one-time skill, automatically disappears after the duration ends)]

[Equipment requirements: no special requirements]

[Special Effect 1 (Inspiration): Under the illumination of the goddess' candlelight, your creative thinking will become more active, your state of mind and environment will be integrated, and the creator will be able to pour his emotions into his work more easily.]

[Special Effect 2 (Art Blessing): You can select one or more system skills or painting techniques. After using the skill "Candlelight of the Muse's Blessing", you will continue to gain a certain degree of positive gain under the illumination of candlelight. The level of the painting technique or skill quality you selected will increase by one level.

The duration of this skill varies with the proficiency level of the original technique you choose. 】

Gu Weijing has not used this little candle since he finished painting the cover of "The Little Prince".

In this regard, Gu Weijing inherited his grandfather's stingy nature.
Every time you open a treasure chest, you get a small blessed candle.

He kept them all and saved them up. He always felt that these things should be saved for the most critical and important occasions. It would be a waste to use them simply to gain inspiration.

Even when he was extremely confused while painting wisteria flowers in the botanical garden, Gu Weijing did not even think of taking out these things and using them.

But if we were to say what the most important occasion is—

Then, Gu Weijing understood.

It's now.

(End of this chapter)