The Versatile Master Artist

Gu Weijing applied a bit of force and erased ten or so small grids with his pencil.

Koukou leaned forward to take a peek at the podium and saw the teacher wasn’t in the classroom, so she completely relaxed.

She tilted her head, resting her right wrist under her chin, lazily swiping through her phone, occasionally glancing at the progress on her worksheet.

Even though she was already numb to Gu Weijing’s speed, observing this up close and openly still felt distinctly different.

”Honestly... your proficiency with the sketching technique goes far beyond most of the students, doesn’t it?”

Koukou squinted and couldn’t help but say, ”I think your coloring speed is almost on par with how the teacher was demonstrating at the podium earlier.”

”Strictly speaking, it’s still a bit off.”

Gu Weijing rotated his pencil and began addressing the last blank spot on the sketch paper.

Professor Watter is a senior art professor at Fitz High School, widely recognized in all of Yangon for his exceptional sketching skills.

After the school year began, Gu Weijing used the Calligraphy and Painting Identification Skill to glance at the teacher’s works in the school exhibition.

Professor Watter’s sketching skill reached Tier One on his system panel, with experience points hovering around 4500.

He’s quite close to Tier Two expertise.

In pure numerical terms, Gu Weijing actually falls short.

”Professor Watter probably wasn’t showing his speed limit before, plus he was drawing bent over in a standing position under the projector, which affects pencil technique.”

Gu Weijing thought for a moment and explained, ”I need some time to catch up to Teacher Watter’s level.”

”Some time... this casual tone is like saying having a coffee at the school gate in the afternoon, but Teacher Watter graduated from the renowned European Academy of Fine Arts! You’ve got quite the nerve, Mr. Gu.”

Koukou raised her eyebrows in disdain, ”Sure enough, you’re not satisfied with beating us classmates; you’re planning to challenge the teacher, huh.”

Gu Weijing didn’t plan to explain anything to the little girl.

He lowered his head and continued concentrating on shading the last small square.

Gu Weijing noticed,

the speed at which he was gaining experience points had started to slightly decline compared to when he first began practicing.

Initially, during these exercises, he could achieve an almost similar speed of gaining experience points as when activating the Menzel Skill.

After practicing with these thirty grids, his speed in gaining experience points was probably only eighty to ninety percent of the initial speed.

That’s not a bad thing,

it’s just because Gu Weijing has the foundation of a professional painter, allowing him to quickly make up for his lack of detail in pencil use.

He estimates that with another month of practice, he should be able to completely control the length of lines as he wishes.

By then,

due to the marginal effect, the speed of gaining experience points from this kind of practice will likely regress to be on par with normal sketching techniques.

Come to think of it,

If such simple practice could indefinitely maintain such efficient improvement without decline, the method invented by Professor Watter wouldn’t just have him as a high school teacher in a small place like Yangon.

He thought the conversation had ended.

Yet Koukou suddenly waved her fist, ”Still, I believe in Mr. Gu’s ability to enjoy a luxurious dinner at Bistrot 1836. Go get them, go get them.”

Gu Weijing looked up in confusion, ”How do you know about that?”

”Didn’t someone say it was a coincidence running into a Bentley? Was booking a top Italian restaurant for dinner also a coincidence?” Koukou didn’t answer, pouting, ”Liar.”

”Were you stalking me?”

Gu Weijing frowned, irritated by the girl’s overwhelming curiosity.

”Not really, don’t be mad!”

Koukou grinned and pushed her phone over, ”It’s worth writing homework for me, even though the cookies don’t taste good. But this piece of information is worth the ticket price!”

”Your little girlfriend went for a candlelit dinner with another man, don’t blame me for not warning you. If it were me, I couldn’t stand it.” Koukou blinked her big eyes, reporting the tip.

Gu Weijing took the phone and found out it was an international TikTok account called ’Mona’s Painting Cottage.’

Of course he knew this account.

Gu Weijing is actually the administrator of its live stream.

The TikTok account was created by Gu Weijing and Mona together, from a post-lesson assignment of the ’Internet Art Marketing’ elective course at school.

Nowadays, with the internet media being so advanced, artists no longer focus solely on the traditional approach of staying in the studio and painting quietly.

Even before the millennium, high-end professional painters in Europe and America mostly had their own official accounts or personal websites managed by dedicated personnel.

Now there are more platforms like YouTube channels, TikTok live streams, and various other content.

Uncle Yakai and Miss Shengzi’s studio photo walls on Instagram, as well as Mr. Tree Sloth’s podcast salon, are all part of this category.

Fitz School set up related elective courses early on.

When they were in eleventh grade, Mona determined that pursuing art and doing self-media marketing had a promising future, so she pulled Gu Weijing into enrolling in the elective.

The teacher required each study group to create a self-media account on YouTube, TikTok, or Twitch (foreign live streaming platform), choosing one.

The end-of-semester grade would be assessed based on audience viewing numbers.

Thanks to Mona’s good looks, their account managed to surpass ten thousand followers by semester’s end, and one of their videos had over 150,000 views.