The Versatile Master Artist

After consulting with Uncle Ah Lai, Gu Weijing decided to temporarily use the caretaker’s small house as a makeshift studio for him and Miss Koizumi Katsuko.

Painting outdoors in the rain might be seen in romantic love movies, but it’s certainly not realistic.

After much consideration,

unless a shed is built, Uncle Ah Lai’s room is the most suitable choice.

Looking out from the small window of this room, you can almost take in the full view of the Old Church, nearly resembling the scene in Carol’s painting.

Koizumi Katsuko is still on the way,

so Gu Weijing and Uncle Ah Lai moved the table by the window to the side of the iron bed inside, then set up two wooden easels on either side.

The little girl Jasmine was brewing tea by the stove.

Meanwhile, Gu Weijing was gazing at this ancient religious building through the window.

In the rain, it stood firmly on the ground, unyielding.

In many places in the Western World, churches are ancient buildings intertwined with time.

If you don’t notice the mottled weathering marks left by time on the brick surface, just looking at the light red domed roof, white building walls, and light green window trims,

this orphanage, despite being older than Gu Weijing’s great-grandfather, surprisingly appears somewhat fashionable.

Churches might be among the most stylistically variable and structurally complex buildings in the world.

Thus, depicting these churches has become almost the best opportunity for oil painters to showcase their exquisite brushwork.

Each painting is like a milestone testing their great skills.

Almost every well-known oil painter famous for landscape painting in Europe has painted such subjects, making church-themed artwork abundant in art textbooks.

Onion dome-style Byzantium churches, round arched roof Roman churches, sharp angular Gothic churches resembling spearing bamboo shoots, retro Renaissance style, the grandly ornate Baroque style...

Raphael, Manet, Monet, Henri Matisse, Picasso...

Audiences can easily see a history of architectural trend changes and evolution of oil painting techniques in the works of famous artists from different eras.

The Old Church on the original site of Good Fortune Orphanage, Gu Weijing judged, should belong to the Rococo style church popular around the 18th century.

This architectural design is relatively simple in appearance.

Elegant and charming, with a penchant for using a fresh natural style and artistic curves with a light-colored tone in its architectural language.

Its biggest advantage is cost-effectiveness in construction, much less time-consuming and labor-intensive than the towering Gothic cathedrals that often require centuries to complete.

Many classic colonial era churches followed this style.

Although simple,

the heart-shaped windows on Good Fortune Orphanage’s building walls were still delicately inlaid with exquisite stained glass, like those beautiful European churches.

Much of the stained glass had shattered years ago, but fortunately, the few facing the front of the caretaker’s house still retained much of their old appearance.

The candlelight refracted and colored by stained glass like a rainbow, dreamily and ethereally – this is exactly the most beautiful and striking highlight in the female painter Carol’s ”Old Church on a Stormy Day,” also the most difficult part to capture in painting.

Even with the help of the Calligraphy and Painting Identification Skill, he found it hard to imitate.

Unlike Lang Shining’s invention of New Style Painting, which is more of a conceptual difficulty, this is purely a challenge in oil painting brushwork.

This is the crown of oil painting imitation difficulty, requiring gradual accumulation of brushwork experience, solid fundamentals, with no room for pretense.

The female painter’s rendering of candlelight is like a master artisan, using thousands of dazzling kingfisher feathers, coral, and agate, to inscribe a diadem like a wreath of kingfisher feathers.

On the gloomy surface of ”Old Church on a Stormy Day,” that rainbow-like glow was meticulously painted stroke by stroke.

The so-called master level of oil painting technique is most pronounced here.

Not to mention creating it himself, even when allowing Gu Weijing to compare stroke by stroke with the original, it was extremely difficult to reproduce Carol’s essence and color.

[Current Task: Choose to imitate an Impressionist work with oil painting technique reaching Lv.7 Tier One Grandmaster.]

[1. Achieve imitation similarity of over 20%, receive one Basic Treasure Chest.]

[2. Achieve imitation similarity of over 50%, receive one Intermediate Treasure Chest.]

[3. Achieve imitation similarity of over 90%, receive exclusive reward: Ray Noah - Human World’s Hundred Ghosts Fragment, can only be gained once.]

[Current highest imitation similarity: 39.1%]

”Let’s see if today, aided by painting from the actual scene, we can break the ten percent mark and get the Intermediate Treasure Chest.” He calculated slowly in his mind.

The sound of a car engine came from afar, and a black and brown Mercedes-Benz glided through the now open courtyard gate.

The car door opened, and as the bellhop wearing white gloves opened the rear door for the guest, a slender girl in a dark red dress appeared in Gu Weijing’s view.

Koizumi Katsuko took the umbrella from the driver’s hand, stood in the courtyard momentarily, and attentively admired the orphanage in front of her.

It’s hard to believe,

she wrote a thesis about this old church and had imitated nearly ten of Carol’s original works, but this was the girl’s first real visit to the site.