A bright blue sky with fluffy little clouds. The sky ended at the horizon in a haze and the ocean began in the same haze as well.

The dark, scary ocean felt cold. It brought a gloomy aura to the entire painting. The crusty, black ground didn’t help in the least.

However, there was just one thing that would turn this gloomy, desolate atmosphere into a scene that would make one in awe of its majesty.

And that was the splash of Gold that Alex had just added to it.

A bright golden stroke landed in the ocean as it was dragged down to the land. Alex painted it a few times before stopping.

Tian Honglui got a bit curious as to what he was looking at. He looked at what Alex was doing and saw him bring out more golden paint and limbs to the golden shaft.

It was only then that he realized that Alex was drawing a tree.

Alex drew the trunk and the branches and then moved to the color yellow to fill in the leaves. He wasn’t sure how to make the leaves look authentic, so he just spread the yellow around the top of the golden branches and acted as if that was all he had to do.

He took the least bit of yellow and started spreading it across the canvas in places where the light of the tree would reach. Once he was done, he stopped and put away both the canvas and the palette.

“This is it,” Alex said. “This… is the scene in my mind.”

This was his memory from the first time he opened his eyes in this world without another soul in his body. In a way, this was the very first thing he had ever seen.

“This looks good,” the young man said. “This is actually decent for a newbie, your majesty.”

Alex turned to the young man ad glared. “I know you know it’s bad. Tell me what is wrong and how I can improve,” he said. “Let’s see if this method of yours actually works or not.”

“Uhh… it works for sure,” the young man said. “It worked for me.”

“Okay, I’ll trust you then,” Alex said. “Go on. What’s next?”

“Ah, right!” the young man said. “About your painting, I know I said you don’t have to worry about colors, but I must get that out of the way.”

“Your black is too black. There is no way water that far back becomes that black. Water so close shouldn’t be so blue. The blue sky obviously seems fake and the clouds are never that white, not all the way through.”

The young man spoke for a while, going into every single mistake that Alex made with the colors while painting. Alex wasn’t even aware these were mistakes he could make, but he let the young man speak for a while.

“Alright, now that the color mistakes are out of the way,” the young man said. “Your majesty, where exactly is the sun in this picture? Or the moon?”

“Uhh… it was morning midday, if I remember correctly, so it was up above me,” Alex said. “It’s in a location in the sky where I can’t fit on the canvas.”

“Okay, and I’m assuming the sun isn’t clouded or anything,” the young man asked.

“No,” Alex said. “Did I miss something?”

“Where are the shadows?” the young man finally asked. “The water, the cracks in the ground, the tree, there is no shadow anywhere.”

“Ah! I forgot about the shadows,” Alex said, only now realizing why the painting looked so fake. 

“Yes, you forgot the shadow,” the young man said. “You seemed to realize that you needed to light up the atmosphere in certain colors like the yellow reflected from this tree onto the beach. But you didn’t seem to realize about the shadow.”

“Lighting and shading are some of the most important ways to make your painting look more detailed than it actually is,” the young man said. “The ground should have had shadows, the tree should have had a shadow. Even the clouds should have had a shade underneath it.”

“I see,” Alex said. “That is something to remember, isn’t it?”

“Hit me,” Alex said. “I will take in all I can get right now. Tell me all the mistakes.”

“Okay,” the young man said. “Let’s start with the absence of the clouds as reflections on the water then.”

The young man continued talking a lot about Alex’s painting, explaining to him what he had done wrong, and what he could have done right.

Reflections, shades of colors, light diffusion, ambient lighting, highlights.

Anything and everything he saw wrong in that painting, he told Alex about it.

Alex on the other hand absorbed everything he was told in its entirety. He didn’t contemplate any mistakes right away and left that for later.

Once the young man was fully done explaining what had gone wrong, Alex finally spoke. “Thank you,” he said. “I will now take my time and try to understand what I did wrong, and how I can improve.”

“Please do, Your Majesty,” the young man said.

Alex closed his eyes and was about to start thinking about his mistakes when he paused. “Wait, you never told me about my actual drawing skills. About those lines, about those strokes. Do they not matter?”

“They matter, very much,” the young man said. “They just don’t matter to you right now. As a starting painter, there isn’t much I can’t tell you about the strokes and lines that you can understand.”

“I will have to teach you about them later and then I can tell you what you have done wrong,” he said.

“I see,” Alex said. “Then I shall try to think about the mistakes I made.”

The young man nodded. “And while you do that, please think of another scene to draw. You will have to start another painting soon as well.”

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