The Versatile Master Artist

Chapter 16: Chapter 6: Online Illustration

”Are you sure you want to transfer $300 to the recipient [Krell Clean Water Fund]?”

Gu Weijing looked at the transfer notification popping up on his phone.

Without much hesitation, he tapped to confirm the payment on the screen.

The prompt on the system panel was a delicious temptation.

Like a curious Gypsy Girl fiddling with her crystal ball—people always want to chant a mysterious spell to see how it will respond.

His international account had over three hundred US Dollars, and Gu Weijing seriously considered the new model of the Swtich game console just released.

After much deliberation.

The temptation to donate for experience points won over the temptation of Pocket Monster.

At an exchange rate of ten dollars for one experience point, he needed to donate nearly six thousand Dollars to advance his sketching proficiency from Level 3 to the next level.

Even acquiring the hundred experience points needed to advance from Level 2 to Level 3 required a full thousand Dollars.

Gu Weijing certainly didn’t have that much money right now.

However, charity donations were something that could accumulate over time, and combined with the experience from his daily practice, he remained quite optimistic.

Very soon.

[You have successfully donated: $5.31]

[You have gained additional experience points: 0.531]

Huh?

Gu Weijing wondered if he had seen it wrong or if there was some mistake during the transaction.

He reopened PayPal (an international mobile payment software) and checked the outgoing details.

No doubt about it.

$300 was withdrawn from his account, not some odd $5.31.

[To prevent players from evading taxes or performing fraudulent donations under the guise of charity for personal enjoyment, the system only calculates expenses truly spent on those being helped.]—This message popped up on the system.

”Evading taxes or performing fraudulent donations under the guise of charity for personal enjoyment?”

Gu Weijing was stunned for a second.

He knew that charity donations are a tax evasion method for some high-income wealthy individuals.

In many developed countries, once an estate exceeds a certain amount, the tax rate is extremely high.

During World War II, the UK’s Minister of Finance once implemented a highest estate tax rate of 98%.

What’s the concept here, your wealthy dad passes away, leaving an estate of one million pounds. Sorry, you can only inherit twenty thousand pounds, the remaining nine hundred eighty thousand pounds are estate taxes.

Congratulations, you’ve instantly gone from a rich kid to a struggling working class.

And charity, in most cases, is tax-exempt. If your dad establishes a charitable foundation with one million pounds and appoints his son as the CEO of the foundation, then no tax needs to be paid.

That’s why we often see American billionaires making large donations—a display not necessarily out of moral greatness.

”But I genuinely made an actual donation?”

He quickly realized.

A feeling of premonition loomed in his heart.

Gu Weijing stared at his payment records for a long time, then looked at the message on the system panel.

After a full half minute of silence.

The young man finally accepted a fact—it was a scam.

Gu Weijing was speechless and almost tearful.

His family was in business, and in this kind of place, he had just skillfully outwitted a gang visiting his place with a strategy involving a pack of Marlboro, which averted their fruit plate scheme, and he was immersed in a kind of proud happiness for it.

Although.

But still.

Despite all this.

He ended up falling victim to online fraud in his first international payment.

Gu Weijing was utterly dumbfounded.

He glared at his computer, gnashing his teeth at the [Krell Clean Water Fund] headquartered in Singapore, which claimed to be dedicated to providing healthy, clean drinking water to third-world countries in Africa.

”Seriously, are you greedy for my money? Have some decency.”

Gu Weijing wasn’t sure whether this counted as fraud or embezzlement, but the outcome for him was the same.

He had heard that concerning private charitable foundations,

some Western countries have relatively lax management.

A billionaire’s foundation might have just donated several buildings to a school at a thank-you banquet, just so his children could get unearned qualifications.

The so-called Special Cases.

It’s not that rich kids definitely don’t work hard in school, and it’s not to say there are insider trades in university charitable donations; on the contrary, these are rare instances, yet they truly exist.

Hospitals follow the same logic.

So some say, donating to patients or students is true charity; while donating to hospitals or universities is essentially investing.

According to media reports, the average salary of private charitable organizations in the United States is about forty to fifty thousand US dollars, far higher than the average income.

Gu Weijing didn’t feel qualified to despise them.

After all, it’s their own money; even if only one percent is spent on those in need, it’s better than spending it on casinos or the like.

But for a foundation that solicits donations from the public, doing so is excessive.

That was the first money he ever made from selling his artwork in his life! How commemorative it was.

He hadn’t even held it in his hands for half a day!

”It seems that in the future, if possible, I should do things personally instead of directly transferring money to such foundations with unknown details.”

The money had already been transferred. Gu Weijing could only swallow the loss in silence, knowing that he had no ability to find evidence of the other party’s illegal actions. He kept this so-called [Krell Clean Water Fund] in mind and closed the page.

There’s no point in dwelling on things that have already happened.

He now had only two goals in mind: one was to make money, and the other was to continue improving his painting skills.

Or maybe they were essentially the same thing.

...

[Sketching Experience +23]

[Sketching lv.3 Semi-Professional (374/1000)]

Gu Weijing put down the colored pencil, looking at the sketch paper in front of him that depicted a large cat wearing glasses.

The skill he mastered, [Menzel’s Painting Basics], required at least a day’s interval before it could be activated again.

Without the boost of Perfect Level skills, even though he spent much more time on this sketch than on that small colored pencil drawing,

not only was the finished product much less stunning than that painting, but the proficiency gained was also less than one-sixth of that painting.

Sketching is the foundation of all art painting, and now aware of his gap with true masters, Gu Weijing planned to raise his sketching skills to lv.4 first.

”Grand opening promotions, professional gallery contracted artist, part-time illustrator, the first twenty customized works at just ten dollars each. Timely delivery, no missed deadlines...”

As he scanned this sketch work with the scanner in the bookstore and uploaded it to the computer, Gu Weijing edited his copy on the online shop webpage.

This was a global freelance platform.

It’s called ”Nutshell Universe.”

WWW.NutshellfreelancerXXX——.com.

The site icon is a white inspiration mug with a small universe imprint. The site creator believed that in today’s atomized society, everyone in the world lives in a small nutshell. They used a literary slogan from Alex’s play——”Though I am confined in a nutshell, I imagine myself king of infinite space.”

”In a nutshell” also has the slang meaning in English of doing something simply and briefly.

He was probably a literary youth.

Most literary youth startups tend to fail, but this website has been quite successful.

At its inception, it was famous for the idea that with just the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee, you could earn enough to cover that coffee, thus enjoying a daily life free of coffee and nuts.

It is now one of the largest freelance job platforms for freelancers worldwide.

There are nearly one hundred million daily users.

The most famous anecdote is about a software engineer working for an internet company in Silicon Valley who applied to work from home. He then subcontracted all his programming work to a third-party programmer found on ”Nutshell” for a monthly price of 2000 dollars. He leisurely enjoyed food and entertainment, doing nothing, and was even rated as an outstanding employee until he was discovered three years later.

Painters, translators, guides, actuaries, copywriters, coding gods, software engineers... all sorts of professions can be found on this platform, and the buyers’ demands are just as diverse.

”Of course... there are likely scammers too, there’s no shortage of scammers anywhere.” Gu Weijing reminded himself.

He wasn’t there to buy things online.

He was there to sell things.

”Online freelance illustrator.”

This was the best money-making strategy that Gu Weijing could think of for now.

This sketch of the cat detective with Sherlock Holmes glasses was what he designed as the shop poster and sign.

For a middle schooler like him, relying on selling art in galleries to make money was nearly impossible.

The purchasing power of locals in Yangon was quite limited, and if he delayed his regular studies to find work that made money, it would be counterproductive and not worth the loss.

On Nutshell, there were over a million registered freelancers from around the world, most of whom did simple English-native language translation work.

The illustration category alone had several thousand artists online.

He uploaded his sketch of the cat to the homepage of the shop he just registered, so it could be immediately seen as the shop’s poster.

The main reason for choosing a cat detective as the sign is that potential buyers who commissioned works online generally liked various animal illustrations. And this little creative idea would make others more willing to trust that this was his own real artwork and not just some randomly found image online.

Many freelance illustrators on Nutshell approached it with a joking attitude, being introverted and poor at communication, making their homepage design rather rough.

They not only lacked a poster, but the shop description was just a few lines, and they hadn’t uploaded a personal portfolio.

They may have good painting skills as well, but compared with these people, the information on Gu Weijing’s homepage was richer and clearly more reassuring for buyers.

As for those veteran painters on Nutshell with over five years of business experience and thousands of completed transactions,

his strategy was to wage a price war; while others charged fifty dollars, he charged only ten dollars.

After all, what he needed was practice, and making money was just one step in improving his drawing skills.

Low prices are always an advantage; everyone wants to buy Van Gogh’s work at the price of cabbage, and rich foreigners are no exception.

Finally, Gu Weijing uploaded several works he was quite satisfied with before and wrote the content on the homepage in English, then used translation software to translate it into French, Japanese, Spanish, German, and Portuguese, before clicking upload.