The Versatile Master Artist

Chapter 105 - 85: Copying an Oil Painting

As soon as Gu Weijing got home, he returned to the studio in the calligraphy and painting shop.

There’s no better time than now,

since he has picked the right piece, he wants to reproduce this oil painting today.

Gu Weijing quickly found a canvas, brushes, palette knife, and palette in the studio.

He also specially took a bottle of chemically synthesized fast-drying medium from the cabinet.

Contrary to what many people imagine, oil paints cannot be diluted with water, they must be with special drying oils. As the drying oil gradually evaporates, it forms a dry film of oil on the canvas that fixes the pigment.

Different oil formulas dry at completely different speeds after coming into contact with air.

Some are fast and some are slow,

the fast-drying formula is called "thin oil" in the industry, while slow-drying, oil-rich formulas are called "fat oil."

For any oil painting, the first important principle learners acquire is the fat-over-lean principle.

Simply put, the lower the layer of paint, the faster the formula should dry.

The higher the layer of paint, the slower the formula should dry.

If reversed, the top layer of paint dries and shrinks before the bottom layer, causing the top layer to harden and possibly crack or flake off.

There are quick ways to paint an oil painting and there are slow ones.

Generally speaking, classical methods often use dry techniques.

The oil painting of the Mercedes-Benz model by Gu Weijing took him almost a month just to color, as he waited for each layer to completely dry.

However, Impressionist works usually have thicker paint and strong expressive brushwork, allowing wet layers to be covered.

Additionally, with modern chemical fast-drying mediums developed by oil paint manufacturers, an oil painting can be completed in an afternoon if done quickly.

Gu Weijing stretched a suitably sized canvas over the frame and secured it.

He selected a white canvas covered with acrylic.

Like paint, the white primer on the canvas’s surface can be mixed with lithopone, titanium white, and other pigments if a perfect finish is pursued.

But since this is his first time reproducing this master-level piece,

Gu Weijing knows he likely won’t paint it well, so there’s no need to fuss over these finer details.

It’s like taking an exam; first reaching over eighty marks before worrying about neatness is more meaningful. Instead of painstakingly repainting the canvas, it’s better to reproduce several times for greater improvement.

Gu Weijing first scanned the entire painting into a digital version using a contactless scanner in the gallery, then projected the digital photo onto the canvas with a projector.

This is another quick copying trick.

Gu Weijing is naturally strong in spatial awareness, which is quite advantageous when reproducing artwork. He could precisely draft from scratch with a pencil while facing the original, but it’s too time-consuming.

After all, he will definitely reproduce "Old Church on a Stormy Day" many times.

The focus of the first reproduction is to ponder the painting’s creation process, understand its color theory, and become familiar with its composition.

So, Gu Weijing opted for the clever and time-saving approach of projecting the original painting with a projector.

He adjusted the projector so that the image size perfectly matched the canvas.

As soon as he began sketching on the canvas with a pencil, Gu Weijing noticed the changes brought by a month of sketch improvement.

Smooth—

This was Gu Weijing’s biggest feeling.

With the projector’s help, the painter can quickly establish the large forms within the oil painting theme, but the smaller forms need constant adjustment through deeper processing.

It still tests sketching skills with a brush.

This has no assistance from Menzel techniques; Gu Weijing is purely using his own ability to paint.

In the past, he often reproduced famous paintings under the guidance of an art teacher, accurately drafting but finding the reproduction process quite rough.

In a strict sense, he felt it was more tracing than painting.

But now, with Tier One professional sketching skills, he finally had the feeling that his brush followed him, rather than him following the brush.

Following his thought process, Gu Weijing slowly, as clearly as possible, used lines to restore the general spatial relationships in the image.

At this point, the advantages of live sketching from the original began to gradually be reflected.

Gu Weijing frequently paused his brush, comparing with the original placed in front.

Sometimes he just glanced quickly at the original, sometimes he stared at the image for a long time, and occasionally he even put down his brush to pace back and forth in the studio.

He gazed squarely at the church on the frame, moving from far to near, then from near to far.

Achieving ample communication with the original itself is the most desirable state for painters in reproduction, something that electronic reproductions cannot do.

It’s like the difference between listening to an English tape and directly conversing with an English teacher.

It’s said that years ago, a painter suddenly cried while reproducing Adolf Menzel’s realist masterpiece depicting bourgeois workers’ lives, "Steel Factory," in a museum.

When asked why,

the painter answered: "I felt sparks from hell splashed onto me."

An oil painting is like a piece of amber solidifying the painter’s spirit, it’s alive, changing under different lights and angles.

Like for Gu Weijing who walks back and forth and observes repeatedly, it’s a privilege possible only if you buy the painting home.

As Gu Weijing’s brush speed increased, dense, intricate lines appeared on the canvas.

After about half an hour, Gu Weijing put down the pencil.

Since it was just the pencil sketch, there was no need to finely express the light and shadow, as long as there was a basic form.

"Hmm, there are still many imperfections, but the general shape is as follows."

He turned off the projector, placed his draft beside the original, and examined it for a few seconds, overall it was passable.

Gu Weijing’s draft divided the view into three parts.

The stormy sky was the background; the church’s architectural structure was the main subject, with the two statues of the Virgin in the front as the foreground.

With the sketch work done, it was time to prepare the base color.

Gu Weijing began adjusting the oil paints.

Soon, he frowned.

"Something doesn’t feel right."

He hadn’t even started coloring, yet Gu Weijing already felt at a loss on what to do next.

He glanced at his oil painting panel—[Oil Painting: Semi-Professional lv.3(217/1000)].

Legend has it that a saint’s sermon can enlighten mortals, like mud giving birth to a lotus flower.

Gazing directly at what the system evaluated as a painting saint’s work seemed to have a similar effect.

Gu Weijing’s rash appreciation of Ray Arno’s work even had him carried to the hospital.

But after waking up, he found that just that brief glimpse had inexplicably added several points to his oil painting technique, bringing it to Lv.3 semi-professional level.

Regrettably, even at semi-professional level, it’s still far too distant from Tier Two Grandmaster standards.

No matter if the original artwork was right in front of him, Gu Weijing, with palette in hand, couldn’t recreate the original color feeling.

Though earlier, while restoring murals, "Mojie’s Handwriting" provided insights into Chinese painting pigments, aiding quite a bit in his oil painting techniques.

But aside from the differences between Chinese painting and oil painting colors, Impressionist oil paint mixing is inherently the most complex within oil painting.

Impressionist painters often choose suitable colors as the tone for base colors, expressing more of a feeling during mixing. They don’t precisely mix colors on the palette, changing as needed.

The background color of this painting is black-brown. On the palette, Gu Weijing tried to mix several blacks and purples.

He still felt it wasn’t quite right; compared to the original’s skillful use of dark but not gloomy colors, it looked too stiff and rigid.