The Versatile Master Artist

Gu Weijing couldn’t predict when he would need it.

Regretfully, the system panel was ultimately not a voice control game for Gu Weijing.

Intermediate Treasure Chest, open.

It’s not Experience Points, nor a one-time skill of a Blessing Small Candle.

In front of Gu Weijing floated three silver cards resembling poker cards.

[Choose one of the three Knowledge Cards as the reward for this Intermediate Treasure Chest.]

[Reward One: ”Quel Palace Palace Architectural Drawings and Nineteenth Century Decorative Arts Detailed Explanation” - Antoni Gaudi]

[Reward Two: Muscle Power Posture Interpretation in the famous painting ”Wrestler” - Thomas Eakins]

[Reward Three: ”Pet Mind Reading Technique - Twelve Tips for Discovering if Your Cats and Dogs are Happy” - Louis Piquet]

Intermediate Treasure Chests are different indeed.

The Knowledge Cards presented were much more considerate compared to those from Basic Treasure Chests.

It was no longer the system randomly stuffing him with some weirdly obscure Knowledge Card with uncertain usefulness. Instead, it offered Gu Weijing three choices to select based on his needs.

Gu Weijing glanced at the three options.

These Knowledge Cards were actually quite useful.

They seemed much more reliable for artists compared to weird things like the ”Purple Blue Macaw Feather Specimens and Skeleton Anatomy Map” he got from previous Basic Treasure Chests.

In the artistic path, they could greatly assist Gu Weijing.

Obviously,

Reward One and Reward Two correspond to the major categories of architectural painting and figure painting in artistic subjects.

Antoni Gaudi is a genius akin to Da Vinci in the history of architectural art.

He was both an architect and a sketch artist, a representative figure of the Art Nouveau movement.

Any architectural design signed with this master’s name almost equates to a world cultural heritage-level monument.

Quel Palace in Spain became renowned throughout the nineteenth century for its rich decorative details and innovative designs like mosaic tiles with clever curves.

If he chose this reward.

He could create extremely realistic and accurate architectural paintings based on the Quel Palace Palace in the future.

He could also apply similar techniques to paint other famous buildings designed by Gaudi, like the Holy Family Church and Mira Apartment, where countless art students sketch every year.

Reward Two is no less impressive.

Generally speaking, whether in art or literature, Europeans naturally looked down upon their American relatives.

This implicit discrimination persisted from the War of Independence to the late twentieth century cultural sphere.

But ”Wrestlers” is an exception, belonging to the few notable native oil paintings in American history.

Thomas Eakins is known as the Father of American Art, and a key figure for students studying art history in North America.

His contributions to depicting human bodylines are no less than those of Elder Burman, but he focused more on ”muscle dynamics during movement.”

Whether it’s UFC or WWE, Uncle Sam’s people have a fervent love for the scenes of burly men wrestling, which other countries’ citizens find hard to understand.

”Wrestler” almost took the subtle representation of muscle dynamics in oil paintings to a new level.

The least impressive was Reward Three given by the system.

The first two options,

Both Masters Gaudi and Eakins are exceptionally well-known to all art students, and the value of their Knowledge Cards needs no further explanation.

Reward Three left Gu Weijing momentarily stunned.

”What is this?”

He took out his phone and searched online, only to find that ”Piquet” was supposedly a tenured professor at University of California’s veterinary department.

This guy didn’t even have a Wikipedia page.

However, University of California, Davis, his employed school, was ranked first in the QS specialty rankings for the veterinary department for the past three years.

That book ”Pet Mind Reading Technique - Twelve Tips for Discovering if Your Cats and Dogs are Happy” sounds unserious, like a trash read on Amazon for housewives to kill time during leisure.

Online descriptions, however, indicated it was an academically rigorous book on pet behavioral studies, even a required textbook for University of California’s veterinarian students.

In Professor Piquet’s video open course online, Gu Weijing noted a student, claiming to be from University of California, complained - this guy was like a pervert, giving them different pet facial expression pictures each lesson, even X-ray skeleton structures and anatomy maps, and requiring essays analyzing cat and dog behavior modes from these slides.

It was torturously hard!

He hadn’t even suffered this much studying his girlfriend’s micro facial expressions!

Based on this information, Gu Weijing understood Professor Piquet was a top senior expert in veterinary behavior studies.

Veterinary and artist careers aren’t correlated at all.

No matter how impressive Professor Piquet was, he wasn’t comparable to the two great artists.

Given this,

After grasping what the three rewards entailed from his phone research,

Gu Weijing, without any hesitation, chose...

Reward Three.

Just joking!

The first two rewards are also great, but compared to Reward Three, they were overshadowed.

This could teach him how to draw cats and dogs well!