Chapter 80: A Nobody, or Making a Name for Oneself?

Chapter 80: Chapter 80: A Nobody, or Making a Name for Oneself?

For ordinary people, self-study was definitely less efficient than taking classes. Chen Jingle’s greatest advantage was his ability to use the system’s help to absorb scattered professional knowledge from the outside world and quickly build his own complete knowledge system. This alone put him ahead of the vast majority of people. It was equivalent to having an omnipotent teacher—an exclusive private tutor, at that. Therefore, he was more than capable of teaching himself.

"Mr. Xu Beihong mentioned in *Drawing Model* that the secrets to turning the mundane into the miraculous and achieving extraordinary results are: first, proper placement; second, correct proportions; third, clear distinction between black and white; fourth, natural dynamics; fifth, harmonious balance of light and heavy; sixth, vivid manifestation of character; and seventh, capturing the essence through the eyes..." Chen Jingle’s learning steps roughly followed this sequence, from lines to proportions, from dynamics to details, from the three main surfaces to the five tones.

"Even for something as seemingly simple as sketching, there’s quite a lot to learn."

After watching a full hour of theoretical instruction, Chen Jingle finally began his hands-on practice. At first, he just doodled randomly to get a feel for the pencil. The system’s formidable power helped him silently correct issues with pen control and line drawing that arose during his learning process. Gradually, he found his direction.

"The essence of sketching is structure." This was said by the older generation artist and professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Mr. Gao Zongying. He believed that while light and tone could change, the structural form itself would always remain constant. Sketching was the artistic expression of a structure’s essence through the observation, recognition, and understanding of appearances, perfectly unifying the exterior with the interior. Once he understood this point, everything clicked into place. As a result, Chen Jingle’s random doodles, which initially seemed chaotic, began to look surprisingly decent once they took form. This was a very obvious improvement.

What amazed Chen Jingle the most was that when he felt he had practiced enough and decided to draw a complete piece, a rough image of the finished artwork appeared in his mind before he even put pen to paper. His brain was automatically performing 3D modeling! It was fantastic!

So, he cleared his mind and poured himself entirely into drawing. The pencil ground continuously against the paper, outlining perfect line proportions, striking light and shadow contrasts, and textural details brought out by shifting tones. After he finished, Chen Jingle fixed his eyes on the paper—

A pair of long legs in black garter tights. Just a pair of beautiful legs. No upper body.

SHEESH.

"I accidentally exposed my fetish. Good thing no one saw."

But it really was drawn well. Chen Jingle marveled at it, clicking his tongue in wonder. He almost couldn’t believe he had drawn this himself. The whole process had only taken a little over an hour. He used to envy those master NSFW artists who could draw whatever they wanted to see. And now, he had mastered that very same skill.

"Should I bless the masses with this?"

Chen Jingle fell deep into thought. Emotionally speaking, he really wanted to share his drawings with everyone—not for fame or profit, but purely out of a desire to come from the masses and return to the masses. However, the moment he realized that achieving such widespread fame would most likely end with him being thrown behind bars, he chickened out. Alas, he was better off keeping it for his own appreciation!

He temporarily named the drawing *Art*. This was what they called appealing to both refined and popular tastes!

After confirming that every detail met his satisfaction, he signed his name in the bottom right corner, stamped it with his seal, and carefully stored it away. This was his first real drawing since the apple trees and little houses of his elementary school days; it held considerable commemorative value.

"Looking at it this way, I’ve found the direction for the second mystery gift."

Chen Qiyun would surely like it, wouldn’t she? He remembered that she also loved to draw, though her artistic output was still permanently stuck at a kindergarten level.

Comparing it to his own effortless initiation, Chen Jingle couldn’t help but think of the students participating in the joint art entrance exams. Their sketch submissions perfectly embodied the saying: "High-scoring works are all the same, but low-scoring works are uniquely bizarre."

Three to four hundred thousand art students took the college entrance exam, but the eight major fine arts academies only recruited a little over ten thousand each year. Those who passed naturally had decent talent, but the works of those who failed were truly fascinating. They contained all sorts of chaotic messes—a wild parade of horrors. There was the Picasso style, the horror style, the uncanny valley style, the minimalist line style, and so on. It felt like they were affluent kids with no worries about food or drink, coming specifically to teach the examiners a lesson in modern abstract terror.

Chen Jingle had to admit that abstraction truly required more talent than actual drawing. In the face of such raw talent, hard work was utterly worthless. However, passing into a fine arts academy was merely the entry point into the realm of painting. To become a renowned painter, much like with calligraphy, one needed top-tier talent, the right connections to pay respects to the masters, exhibition appearances, and personal branding. None of it was easy.

"Good thing I just want to learn for the sake of learning."

Seeking neither fame nor profit meant he didn’t have to agonize over all that. To hell with the rest of it.

After grasping the preliminary essentials of sketching, Chen Jingle turned his attention to ink wash painting. Since learning pen control through calligraphy, he had a certain foundation, but for traditional Chinese painting, that alone was not enough. Traditional painting had developed over so many years that predecessors had accumulated a wealth of experience. By following the paths paved by those before them, later generations could save themselves a lot of effort.

For instance, Mr. Huang Binhong had proposed the theory of the ’Five Brush Methods’ for brush control: flat, round, lingering, heavy, and changing.

The so-called *flat* meant applying even pressure when moving the brush. The starts and stops must be distinct, with every stroke fully delivered—neither frail nor frivolous. It should be "like drawing in the sand with an awl."

The so-called *round* meant that the turns of the brush must be smooth yet forceful, avoiding arbitrary sharp angles. It should be "like bending a hairpin."

The so-called *lingering* required restrained brushwork that looked back on itself. It should be neither rushed nor sluggish, neither floating nor slippery, and absolutely free of wild eccentricity. It should be "like water stains on a leaking wall."

The so-called *heavy* meant holding the brush with calm weightiness. It must strike "like a boulder falling from a high mountain" rather than "autumn leaves blown in the wind"—what the ancients called "brush strength capable of lifting a cauldron."

The so-called *changing* referred to variations in brush usage, whether employing the center or the side of the tip. The technique had to adapt based on the subject matter, never rigidly sticking to one method. The strokes must echo one another—"the intent arrives even if the brush does not; the brush may break, but the intent remains unbroken."

Furthermore, depending on the subject matter, ink wash painting employed different techniques. Landscape paintings featured trees, rocks, waterfalls, clouds, and buildings. Bird-and-flower paintings utilized line drawing, double-outline coloring, boneless techniques, and freehand styles. Figure painting also utilized line drawing, meticulous brushwork, and freehand styles.

These techniques were further sub-categorized. For painting a single rock, for example, there were outlining, texturing, rubbing, dotting, dyeing, and lifting. Texturing alone included raindrop texture, small axe-cut texture, large axe-cut texture, ox-hair texture, folded-belt texture...

Learning all this professional knowledge made his scalp tingle with sheer overwhelm. Facts proved that Chen Jingle’s decision to learn sketching first was a very correct choice. Even with the system’s assistance, traditional painting required a great deal of mental effort. Let alone ordinary people—the time needed to truly study traditional painting was likely even longer than that required for calligraphy.

As a result, Chen Jingle spent the entire afternoon immersed in learning how to draw, so much so that his dinner was quite simple. But to a little glutton like Chen Qiyun, it all tasted equally delicious.

After his shower, his task for the night was to continue reading. But at 8:30 PM, the lights in the house suddenly went out, plunging the room into total darkness.

"A power outage?!"

Chen Jingle froze for a moment before closing his book. He walked out to the balcony and saw that the neighboring houses were also pitch black; only the solar-powered streetlights were still on.

He was deeply surprised. "It’s genuinely rare to have a power outage in this day and age."