On the first day of the sketching training camp, Shen Jiaru was particularly lenient, giving everyone a break after dinner.
Everyone could relax, rest, take a bath, stroll around to enjoy the scenery, or even play around in the main courtyard of the holiday villa.
However, Hua Jie still clung to her sketchboard, sitting in front of the large window in the hall that looked out onto the courtyard, beginning to depict the rockery under the red lanterns.
The night scene outside was bright, illuminated by the moonlight and the reflective light from the snow-covered ground.
However, the villa’s enclosed courtyard was not so glaringly bright. To create an ambiance, the owner, Fang Tonglin, had not installed modern incandescent lights but used lanterns and lantern-like lamps instead.
Thus, the rockery, small pavilions, springs, pools, stone paths, and wooden walkways were all dimly lit.
Hua Jie simply marked out the major sections of the scene within her compositional frame and began to apply the base wash of color.
She painted what she saw, and the unclear shadows were blurred with vague watercolors, even smoothed out.
Even the bright and relatively clear objects had very low contrast.
If she couldn’t see it, she wouldn’t paint it, so she blurred the boundaries between surfaces and even allowed the colors of two surfaces to permeate each other on the paper.
The dark blue of the night and the red glow of the red lanterns erased the original colors of the objects, so she didn’t paint the original colors of the objects, only the dark blue and dark red she saw.
Many different objects were merged into one by the darkness, and after some hesitation, Hua Jie followed her own vision, discarding her brain’s analysis, letting them form a single still life block on the paper.
To paint what she saw without rational analysis, without using her brain to layer the relationships of sketching, light and shadow, and colors was a unique experience for Hua Jie.
In her previous life, when she first started painting as a child, she couldn’t quite remember if she had ever painted like this.
Stroke by stroke, Hua Jie gradually immersed herself, forgetting everyone else in the hall, as if in the entire snowy villa, only she existed.
Under the warm light of the hall, Shen Mo sat not far from her, flipping through a book and occasionally looking up at the girl painting.
The room was quiet, with no noisy people around, even Qian Chong, being with such a group, became silent. So, it was quiet all around, only occasionally hearing footsteps, the sound of drinking, the clink of cups and plates, the rustling of clothes, and the sound of the wind and snow outside.
Originally, everyone could have wandered around, relaxed, or even taken a dip in the hot springs, but in the end, they all remained in the hall.
Shen Jiaru sat in the sunroom, sketching a new painting on rice paper by a warm lamp.
The bottleneck that had troubled him for many years had new ideas during the teaching process, and inspired by the students, incorporating many of Hua Jie’s avant-garde ideas and techniques, he also faintly felt a breakthrough approaching.
Having not seriously prepared a new painting for a long time, he set sail once again.
As soon as Fang Shaojun saw Hua Jie strolling around after dinner and then sitting down to paint, she too found a scene and began her sketching practice.
After an hour of practice, she quietly pulled out a new sheet of paper and began to draw Shen Mo, who was sitting behind Hua Jie.
The young man leaned back in a rattan chair, one leg slightly bent, the other stretched out, holding a book under a floor reading lamp, reading intently.
Behind him was a wall of bookshelves, and beside the wall stood a peculiar root carving.
The beautiful young man blended into the surroundings, becoming the most dazzling sight in a somewhat dim corner of the hall.
She quickly mixed her colors and with a few strokes of a stiff brush outlined the light and shadow.
Then she meticulously adjusted the shapes and relationships and filled in the details.
It was as if she had memorized everything about Shen Mo; even if he changed his position during her painting session, she could still silently enrich and complete her painting from memory.
When she just gazed at him, her joyful brush, laden with warm colors, sketched the highlights on the young man, capturing his thick eyelashes and somewhat indifferent gaze deeply.
When she captured the young man glancing up at Hua Jie, her brushstrokes became thick with dark colors, dabbing behind him in the dim background, as if a sinister beast lurked behind the handsome youth, watching intently.
Whether in joy or sorrow, painting is an activity that releases emotions and calms the mind.
By the time she had mostly finished the painting, she felt her heart was like a still lake, without a ripple, somewhat tired yet thoroughly enjoyable.
She no longer looked up at Shen Mo, but quietly stared at her own painting for a long while, waiting until the paint had completely dried before reluctantly tucking this painting at the back of a stack of papers, hiding it away.
As if she were hiding her own secrets.
That evening, Lu Yunfei also painted two rather simple gouache sketches, the most patient among them, painting the same still life from different angles, repeatedly without feeling impatient. Instead, he was endlessly fascinated by observing the different lights and shadows and the different beauty from various angles.
Qian Chong stared out at the snowy plains through the window and painted a vague nightscape.
His style already tended toward the dark and eerie, making this painting both strange and terrifying. Perhaps because no one would critique the paintings done in his free time at night, he let himself go, painting freely and satisfyingly.
However, when he turned to look at the others in the room, he thought preemptively that probably no one would truly appreciate such a painting.
Thus, he felt a bit lonely, thinking he had experienced the solitude of an artist and the coldness from standing alone at the heights.
At 10 p.m., Shen Jiaru lifted his head and rubbed his neck.
After sketching drafts for a week, the details became increasingly rich, including the layout of light and shadows, and emotional expression, which he also subtly captured.
He felt that after returning from this snow mountain sketching trip, he should be able to start this painting.
Exhaling a long breath and taking a sip of boiled water, he turned his head and saw the hall was very quiet, all the children occupied their own corners, silently doing their own things.
Watching this scene, accompanied by the warm light and the desolate mountain scenery, he genuinely felt a sense of happiness.
Together, they had conquered boredom.
In this villa, there was no room for boredom to exist.
Shen Jiaru pushed open the glass door of the sunroom and said:
“It’s about time, everyone go wash up and sleep. Tomorrow’s sketching task is even heavier, we need to conserve our energy.”
When the focused children looked up at him, there was confusion in their eyes.
As if they had painted until they had forgotten who they were and where they were.
Shen Jiaru smiled and patted Zhao Xiaolei, who was also painting, on the shoulder, “How about a soak in the hot springs?”
Zhao Xiaolei put down his brush, stretched lazily, and stood up to head first towards the hot spring courtyard behind, “I’ll go get ready.”
Then, everyone said goodnight to Shen Jiaru in turn and went back to their rooms.
Hua Jie did the same, carrying her sketchboard. She gently kicked Shen Mo’s foot as she passed him by way of greeting, then climbed the stairs and turned directly back to the room on the second floor, squeezed tightly between the rooms of Shen Jiaru and Shen Mo.
Once inside, she placed the paintings from the evening and afternoon on the table, glanced at them briefly before heading to the bathroom for a quick shower.
After coming out wrapped in a towel, she continued to dry her hair while looking at her paintings.
One was a vast expanse of snowy field, the other a dimly lit manor courtyard.
On these two paintings, it seemed like she saw nothing but tranquility and silence.
She stopped her movements and sat quietly for several minutes, then sighed softly before continuing to dry her hair.
After putting on her pajamas, she went to the bathroom to blow-dry her hair, and amidst the buzzing noise, she gradually felt tired.
Leaving the bathroom, she immediately turned off the lights, afraid of continuing to stare at those two paintings. She simply let the room go dark, resigning herself to it.
She fell onto the bed and soon felt somewhat groggy.
In a daze, she had a very long dream.
In the dream, she was already an adult, sitting in a small rented room in a big city, with only the light in front of her turned on, holding a stylus, repeatedly drawing a task assigned by a client.
Once, twice, three times… fifty times…
Her spine became increasingly bent, her head drew closer and closer to the drawing tablet, until it was completely resting on it, yet her hand still kept drawing non-stop.
It seemed like the dissatisfied voices of the client echoed endlessly in her ears: “No, not good, not quite right, can you, revise it again…”
In the middle of the night, Hua Jie woke up startled from her dream, holding the blanket tightly and motionless until her breathing steadied.
After a long while, still unable to sleep, she sat up, threw on a long coat, and carried her sketchpad and painting materials out of the room.
A nightlight illuminated the long corridor dimly.
She descended the stairs and sat on the sofa by the large window, turned on the light above her head, and held her sketchpad and pen.
Five minutes later, with a snap, she turned off the light and quietly examined the nightscape outside the window.
…
Shen Mo was a light sleeper. The wall between him and Hua Jie wasn’t entirely made of concrete; half of it was the villa’s thick wooden partition, which wasn’t very soundproof.
Hua Jie getting up in the middle of the night, opening and closing doors, and walking away, although not very loud, still woke him up.
Turning over, clutching the pillow and straddling the blanket, he forced himself to stay awake, waiting for the girl to come back and return to her room to sleep, but she didn’t return after a long wait.
The girl wasn’t sleeping in the middle of the night, sneaking out – what was she doing? Whose room did she slip into? Where did she go?
Strange and frightening thoughts raced through his mind, jolting him awake.
Suddenly sitting up, the young man ran his fingers through his short hair, grabbed a cup of boiled water from the bedside table, took a few gulps, then put on his pajama top and bottoms and left his room.
The entire villa was silent, with no sound at all, only a small night light on the corridor faintly glowing.
He moved to the staircase and looked down; there was no small figure getting water in the kitchen.
Where had the little potato gone?
He thought about going back to knock on her door to see if she had returned to her room while he was dazed.
Or could it be possible that the sound of her leaving was just a part of his dream?
But before he could turn around, he saw in the pitch-dark hall, the girl sitting by the window under the moonlight on the sofa.
The young girl sat hugging her knees, her entire body sinking into the sofa, her shoulders intermittently trembling…
His first thought was, what was she secretly eating there in the middle of the night?
The second thought then was, was she crying?
Walking slowly down the stairs, his gaze fixed on her.
The girl, feeling someone coming down, turned her head like a little mouse, saw it was him, and her panic faded slightly.
Shen Mo reached to turn on the light, but the girl quickly choked out, “Shen Mo, don’t turn on the light.”
His long fingers hesitated over the switch, and he ultimately didn’t press it.
He withdrew his hand and moved next to her. Instinctively, he started to sit opposite to maintain a gentlemanly distance, but after hesitating, he chose to sit beside her instead.
The other side of the sofa dipped as the girl felt the movement until he settled down, and then the soft sofa returned to calm.
She made small motions to wipe away her tears, as if not wanting to disturb him.
It was somewhat embarrassing for her, a grown-up, to be crying quietly here in the middle of the night.
Shen Mo remained silent, stretched out his legs, relaxed his body against the sofa, glanced at her to spare her any embarrassment, and then redirected his gaze to the dim space in front.
The two sat in silence for a few minutes until the girl’s sobbing gradually stopped and turned into somewhat heavy breathing.