The Versatile Master Artist

Gu Weijing returned home, closed the bedroom door, and opened his work email left on the Nutshell website.

He browsed for a moment,

and found the collaboration invitation Scholastic mentioned on Twitter.

”Dear Artist Lady Detective Cat:

The Scholastic Group has always been committed to collaborating with outstanding artists worldwide, providing opportunities for rising stars in the illustration field to showcase themselves... We are honored to invite you to participate in the Group’s ’The Little Prince’ project.

We are now formally offering you a sample submission contract. (Specific details related are attached at the end of the document.)

If you are willing to accept our invitation, please follow the instructions and send the prepared sample by this Sunday, London Time, no later than 5 p.m. to the project’s assistant’s email. If late, it will be regarded as an automatic waiver of the contract.

If you have any confusion or questions regarding the contract, please contact the Group’s Legal Consultation Office through you or your agent...

——Good luck, The Scholastic Group ’The Little Prince’ Project Team.”

Gu Weijing spent a few minutes quickly skimming through the email contents.

This was a sample submission invitation from the publisher.

A sample submission contract is not considered a formal assignment; it is more of a final interview to evaluate the artist’s capability after an employer has a preliminary intention for cooperation with a particular painter before signing a major order.

For example, a news magazine might have about fifty illustrations. The newspaper would take out one page as a trial sample before the first cooperation.

Not all illustrators are willing to provide trial samples.

There are rumors that some employers in the industry use the pretext of sample submissions to obtain artists’ works for free.

However, with publishing giants, the risk of being deceived is minimal.

Not only that,

receiving a sample submission invitation from the Scholastic Group itself is an honor.

The commission offer in the email is obviously more formal and regulated compared to the makeshift collaborations Gu Weijing had encountered online before.

Even if it’s just a sample submission, the publisher still provided a contract that runs for dozens of pages, along with a more detailed task specification.

He does not yet have an agent, so these documents all need to be handled by Gu Weijing himself.

Gu Weijing opened several attached files at the end of the email.

First were two separate documents on sample submission style and painting format.

The style document stipulated the employer’s requirements for the artist’s painting style, whether the picture should be thick-painted or flat, whether line drafts should be colored, and whether it should be flat style or forest style, etc.

The format document specified the size of the base sketch, if electronic painting, it specified the printing resolution and pixel size required for the original digital album.

These two documents are the foundation of formal commission projects in the illustration industry.

Some more troublesome employers even have strict arrangements for the sorting of electronic drafts’ layer of scenes and the types of brushes used by the artist.

Just making these cumbersome format changes required by the client can take a long time.

”This... gives a lot of leeway.”

Gu Weijing nodded.

Miss Jiu Jing Shengzi’s guess was correct; judging by the requirements of these documents, the publisher indeed regarded themselves as a frontline illustrator.

In the industry,

the more high-end the project, the less restraint employers often place on the artist in terms of formalities.

They are more likely to give a broad conceptual requirement, while being willing to offer the renowned painter greater creative freedom in specific painting methods.

The ’The Little Prince’ project team only requested that the sample be in color, with printing clarity after scanning being above 400 PPI (pixels per inch), without strictly demanding specific painting methods.

The final file was an instruction document.

The instruction document is a summary of the illustration commission content, namely what the publisher hopes you to paint specifically.

This PDF was not long and consisted of only two brief sentences.

[Sample Painting Content: Create an illustration themed on: In ’The Little Prince’, Chapter 8—’On the Little Prince’s planet, there have always been simple flowers. These flowers have only one layer of petals, do not take up space, and do not disturb anyone. They would bloom in the grass one morning and quietly wither away by night.’]

[Requirements: Fantasy-like, dreamy, warm, with sufficient sense of space and layering, aligns with Saint-Exupéry’s realistic feelings, has a fairy tale quality, and has enough impact on children.]

”Dreamy, warm...”

Gu Weijing stared at the commission task in the email for a moment.

”A fairy tale type contract!” he thought with delight.

Fairy tale illustrations were just the type of assignment Gu Weijing hoped to receive the most after obtaining a Painting Knife Painting.

While Painting Knife Painting is somewhat lacking compared to a brush in detailing fine details, it has an innate advantage in expressing the dreamy colors of children’s fairy tale styles.

It’s like milk meeting Oreo, butter meeting a butter knife.

The method of Painting Knife Painting paired with ’The Little Prince’, which demands space and possesses an inherently fantastical fairy tale quality, is a perfect match, providing just the solution.

After all,

the origin of Painting Knife Painting stems from artists’ relentless quest for space and beautiful colors.

The Painting Knife Painting style is very similar to the ethereal aura of detachment from the mundane world pursued by the 19th-century Aestheticism art movement.

The Aestheticism art movement’s motto was derived from Wilde’s fairy tale creed—The real world is the enemy of the arts, and all arts arise from innocence.

Coincidentally,

though in the age of Aestheticism’s emergence two centuries ago, Painting Knife Painting couldn’t yet be classified as an independent painting style.