The Versatile Master Artist-Chapter 62 - 54: The Story Takes an Unexpected Turn from the Very Beginning

Chapter 62: Chapter 54: The Story Takes an Unexpected Turn from the Very Beginning

The video started playing,

and the camera lingered for a few seconds on the cover, which featured a cold and stern girl sitting in a wheelchair.

After giving a close-up shot of this impressive girl on the cover, the screen slowly faded out, inserting Mr. Hibernian’s personal logo and shopping website link.

Uncle Sakai’s family had already found a relatively quiet café at the art night market to sit down.

Yakai Gangchang took out his phone and opened a browser plugin from his favorites.

He leaned the phone against the coffee cup next to the iPad that was playing the video.

Comments immediately began to appear in line with the progress of the video, updating line by line on the phone screen.

This was a chatroom plugin.

Different texts had different characteristics.

When people read the scrolling comments, due to reading habits and sentence length.

Languages that use words as sentence sub-units, whether it’s the Latin alphabet of Europe and America or the Cyrillic alphabet system, are difficult to read through horizontal screen comments.

Both live broadcasts and real-time comments can only be played as a separate list on the right side of the video through a browser plugin.

Some feature-rich side chatroom software can even manually add real-time related messages from Reddit, Twitter, and similar forums in discussion areas.

"That girl is gorgeous! lol..."

(The girl on the cover is so beautiful! Haha, does anyone know who she is? Does she have an INS account?)

(She seems to have a leg problem, so pitiful.)

(I think this actually makes her even more beautiful, like the Venus de Milo, I declare I’m in love.) 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

(Bro, why do I feel you’ll fall for any pretty girl in your line of sight.)

(It’s the aura! The key is the aura! This majestic and aloof feeling, it’s like looking at our school principal.)

(Please introduce me to your principal!)

...

Almost just a few seconds online, and the number of viewers had already exceeded ten thousand.

Various comments swiftly scrolled through the notification bar on the right side.

Koizumi Katsuko held a cup of sugarcane milk tea in her arms, sipping it through the straw.

She glanced at the comments on her phone.

People watching the video seemed to be focusing on discussing the pretty girl on the cover at that moment.

She gently shook her head,

That face was indeed very impressive, blue eyes, pale skin, a cold gaze, sitting in a wheelchair, the whole person had a kind of contrasting beauty.

Beautiful women are not rare, especially in the era of self-media; you can see all kinds of pretty girls by turning on the TV.

But the beauty of the girl on the video cover was unique.

Proud yet with a hint of vulnerability, majestic yet with a tinge of tenderness that evoked pity.

"This girl is really so beautiful."

Yakai Gangchang tugged at his artfully styled curls, full of admiration in his tone.

Who knows at this time,

how many boys around the world shared the same sentiment when they saw the video.

"I’m more curious about who she is? This time’s art judge for the seven works, she seems a bit too young." Uncle Sakai thought worriedly.

An art critic is not a beauty pageant contestant.

He would rather see an old man with wrinkled skin and white beard, looking like he won’t live for many more years, in front of the screen.

If the other party’s art literacy could not support her to judge the works with professional and convincing standards,

from a professional viewpoint, this video might lack a lot.

Fortunately, the artistic appreciation credentials displayed in the video quickly dispelled Uncle Sakai’s concerns.

[Anna Ilina—visual art critic, art collector, the youngest contributor and senior editor of the "Ölgemälde (Oil Painting)" magazine since 1934.]

"She is actually a contributor to ’Ölgemälde’?" Koshiba Tarou exclaimed.

"So young."

Koizumi Katsuko bit the straw; she assumed contributors to such an established journal would be aged forty or above.

She did not expect the girl, who seemed not much older than herself, to be among them.

"Remarkable."

Professor Yajima commented: "Becoming a contributor for ’Ölgemälde’ is not easy. I remember in June last year, the original senior editor of the visual arts section of ’Ölgemälde,’ lifelong professor at the Repin Academy of Fine Arts, Professor Sergei Ivanovich retired, and his position was succeeded by a critic called A.E."

"A.E., Anna Ilina, it seems to be her."

Koizumi Katsuko nodded; in the art field, to prevent gender discrimination, using neutral initials instead of feminine names is also a common practice.

"Hello, everyone, I am Mr. Hibernian, welcome to my video."

Mr. Hibernian appeared in front of the camera.

"I believe, friends who have seen the preview already know, the content of our one dollar to one million dollar challenge this episode is an illustration commission. Friendly reminder, please watch until the last moment, as this is the most exciting video I have shot in this series so far."

The most exciting video?

Professor Yajima’s family immediately thought of Lei’s realistic colored pencil drawing,

indeed a dark horse.

The first few minutes of the video were filled with anecdotes about this super influencer purchasing illustrations.

Thomas knew what the audience wanted to see.

Each Nutshell shop owner’s commission process was just over ten seconds, fleeting.

More footage was spent on himself going to the bank with Jean Arnou’s agent to exchange one million dollars.

To satisfy the audience’s curiosity, the editing team also gave a close-up of the entire process of the street homeless person finishing Thomas’ commission within seconds.

And paired the dirty, smudged paper, already stamped with some dirty fingerprints on the back, with decorative special effects.

Uncle Sakai was not interested in such content purely aimed at grabbing attention.

Just as he was about to fast forward, the video aptly cut to the wheelchair-bound girl, located in the Austrian manor’s collection room, and completed the introduction of the evaluation rules.

"What’s up, guys? I think you all already understand the evaluation rules."

Thomas clapped his hands, pointing to the seven framed paintings on the table. At this time, the velvet cloth on the frames had been lifted, but they were still facing away from the audience.

Only Anna in the wheelchair could see the full view of the frames.

"Miss Ilina will subjectively evaluate these illustrations one by one from worst to best for us. And each of the four of us will give it a subjective score, the one with the highest total score will be the winner of this challenge."

"So now, Miss Ilina, which of these seven illustrations do you think is the worst?"

Anna did not answer. Since she removed the velvet covering the seven frames, she hadn’t said a word.

She lightly bit her lip, her blue eyes focused tightly on a certain piece on the table, her brows slightly furrowed.

Her fingers lightly pinched the leather armrest of the wheelchair, her slender fingertips appearing pale due to too much force.

The expression on the girl’s face was very complex, often keeping a stern face when not smiling like a stern queen.

But now, this little queen’s face was full of disbelief, surprise, appreciation, and... an incomprehensible confusion.

"Miss, miss?"

The caregiver aunt behind had been taking care of Anna since her childhood and seldom saw Miss Anna showing such a rich expression, she asked worriedly: "Are you okay."

Anna lightly bit her lower lip. "I’m okay, just... a bit... surprised."

"But this choice shouldn’t be difficult, right?"

Thomas saw Anna’s gaze linger for a long time on the frame, with no response for a long time, and thought she didn’t know how to evaluate it.

There might be controversy over which painting was the best.

But for which painting was the worst.

The result should be obvious, right?

"Yes, among the seven frames, there is indeed one work of the worst, picking it out wasn’t difficult."

Anna turned back, shook her head, and flipped over one of the walnut-framed paintings from the table, facing the camera.

"What a classic, terribly awful, a typical failure. I think this should be one you commissioned on Nutshell, not only completely silly but so typically silly. This is why I never have a good impression of cheap artists."

To Thomas and everyone’s surprise who was watching the video.

It was not the illustration casually drawn by the homeless person; at least it looked quite delicate.

"I’m sorry, I can only give this painting 0 points if zero is the lowest score. It’s not only poorly done but also lacks professionalism."

Anna’s tone was full of disdain, saying coldly.

"Trash."