Born in 1995, Liu Xiaobei is a wall painter.
In a small village in Lijiang, Yunnan, he tried to decorate ordinary houses with a modern look. Some buildings are full of flowers and plants by him, and some are full of anime characters that he draws.
He remembers the first time he painted a wall in the countryside: for fear of rejection, he lied that he was a college student and asked by the school to beautify the countryside. He whispered if he could paint on the wall of his house. With permission, he was so excited that he painted a giant panda blowing colorful bubbles on the wall.
As the exposure increased, some people wanted to sign him, or have a long-term cooperation, but they were all rejected by him.
Liu Xiaobei's work is | a screenshot of the video
[1] He used to secretly paint walls in the city
When it came time to return to his hometown, Liu Xiaobei had just rented a house in a village in Chongqing. He practiced wall painting here.
The idea of going to the countryside to paint had already germinated in his mind earlier. At that time, he secretly made wall paintings in the streets and alleys of the city.
When stealing paintings, he always thinks that if he does not go to the village, he can satisfy his desire to create and beautify his hometown.
After gaining some experience, he began to wander around different villages. When you meet a suitable person who has the desire to paint, communicate with the owner whether you can paint.
Because of his work, he has been running between different cities, and fans have invited him to paint, and he replied that he is not fixed where to paint, look at fate.
He wanted to make a name for himself outside and return to his hometown, but there was an ancient town near the village in Chongqing, and the walls of the village would be controlled, and painting was not so free.
So, in 2021, he packed his bags and set out on his way home.
When he returned home, he began to wander around his village and nearby villages, a place where he grew up, which had slowly taken on a different look in the past twenty years.
After building a building or secondary, he found that this small village began to gradually open restaurants, hotels, etc., and there were also many villagers to consume.
But he, with more eyes on the wall, may be able to paint a flower here, here can draw a cat, here can just draw a giraffe.
Liu Xiaobei began to communicate with the people in the village, saying, Grandpa, I want to paint on this wall outside your house, can you see it? With permission, he began to conceive paintings.
Wall painting is a manual work, not only the painting area is large, but the wall of the façade is high, and scaffolding must be set up. Carrying buckets of paint up and down. The tools used are as small as brushes to brushes. A painting, a small painting takes two or three days, the large one may take five days or more.
Liu Xiaobei's work is | a screenshot of the video
[2] Villagers once considered his paintings unlucky
When I first started painting, passing villagers would stop to look, curious about what he was doing. Children are more curious, and some will sit in front of him all the time to watch him draw.
At the beginning, Liu Xiaobei did not ask the people in the village what they were afraid of, and they painted whatever they wanted. Later, some villagers made suggestions that the content of the painting was unlucky.
"Although the meaning of the paintings I have chosen is very good, everyone's aesthetic is different. Once I was going to draw a dragon, bronze, and I had just finished playing the black and white bottom, and the owner's family felt that the dragon was unlucky. I thought about it, and it was true that I didn't think it through. Then I erased the lotus flowers. He said.
Photo with the owner of the house Screenshot of the video |
Later, in communication with others, he will ask the other party whether he has taboos, what preferences he has, and how accepting he wants to paint this painting.
He found that many times, the village was full of people. "He doesn't necessarily have a standard of his own preferences, and if everyone else says yes, he'll feel good." But if someone quietly tells him what is wrong with this painting, he will feel that this painting is not good. ”
He regretted that one of his paintings was not felt bad by the owner's neighbors, and eventually the neighbors begged the master's family to paint the painting. "Of course it hurts." He said.
But as time passed, he found a balance between painting and the countryside, and he could figure out many things in the past.
It is true that he hits a wall, but more often than not, he gets the generous approval of the villagers. Some villagers even changed into a new dress to take a photo after painting.
Pandas, giraffes, cats and mice, Nezha, lotus koi, white cranes, and painter Ley Bowen's works have appeared on the walls of the village built around Cheng Hai Lake.
In addition to flat painting, Liu Xiaobei also experimented with 3D painting. The impact of 3D made this young man who painted a lot appreciated.
[3] Earn money from business to hoard pigments
When I was painting, at first only the people of the village saw it, but now the people of the next village also came to watch.
The matter of wall painting gradually spread out of the village and out of Cheng Hai Town. His social media accounts are also getting more and more people paying attention, and more and more people are giving him comments "Cool!" ”
Some netizens asked him to go to his village to paint an invitation, liu Xiaobei politely refused: out of selfishness, now only paint in his own village.
He told Jiupai News that the scope of "his own village" is "the village around Cheng Hai", in a sense, cheng Hai town.
The reason why I didn't want to go out of the village was because the dispersion would affect the display effect of the painting. "Everyone wants to punch in what painting, but also run here and there."
Liu Xiaobei's work is | a screenshot of the video
"I'm basically painting during the day now." Liu Xiaobei gets up early every morning, goes to paint after eating breakfast, goes home at noon to rest for a while, and then paints in the afternoon until the sun sets. These days are fulfilling and busy for him.
The amount of paint used for wall painting is very large, and the year of painting at home, the cost of paint alone cost more than 10,000.
In addition to the cost of paint, it also costs clothes. Often, after a wall is painted, his clothes are stained with various pigments. In many videos, Liu Xiaobei is wearing clothes that have paint prints to go out to paint.
With the recent increase in attention, his business list has also increased, "if you can earn money, you have money to continue to paint in the village, a virtuous circle." Liu Xiaobei said.
His commercial wall paintings, ranging from one hundred to several hundred square meters, the most expensive painting ever painted was fifty thousand, which lasted ten days.
Not long ago, he took a commercial order, the list is relatively urgent, had to rush overnight, starry night.
He sped through the night, with cheerful music playing in the car, "The paint in the village is running out, and you have to go out and earn money to hoard paint." ”
Now, he prefers to paint the Chinese style type, and later wants to create a series of works, such as the Zodiac, such as the Classic of Mountains and Seas, because "the series of works will be more attractive." ”
[4] "Later I just wanted to go home"
Coincidentally, there are other people on the Internet who paint wall paintings in the countryside, And Liu Xiaobei knows them, feels very surprised, and feels that he has found a group of confidants who have never met.
And beside him, there are also two good friends, Kai Kai and Mao Mao, these two people met in the process of painting, and now paint with him in their hometown.
Liu Xiaobei's parents are ordinary villagers in the village, and his growth is no different from that of ordinary children. When he was in college, he thought about cultivating a hobby that could support himself, "I wanted to learn to draw and photography, but then I gave up photography because I didn't have money to buy equipment." He said this and laughed.
Wall paintings are provided | respondents
After learning to paint, he was attracted by the majestic atmosphere of the wall painting and slowly leaned in this direction.
When he first started to support himself, he set off from home at the beginning of the year, went wherever he had a list, and traveled to different cities until the end of the year.
Every time he finished drawing a commercial manuscript, he would take a small look around the city to see the city's cultural landscape and feel the breath of the city.
"People say the world is so big, I want to see it." Later I just wanted to go home. Liu Xiaobei was particularly happy when he returned home, and he felt that he was in a particularly comfortable state: at home, with a job, work or what he liked.
When he first came back, he and his partner cooked their own food, and usually talked to his grandmother when he was busy.
Later, his parents also returned home, he went out to paint every day, came back to eat his mother's cooking, "I used to think that my mother cooked as a matter of course, after cooking by myself, I felt that nothing should have been taken for granted." Eating my mother's meal every day is really happy. ”
His social platform began to appear more than a daily routine outside of painting: going to the orchard to pick fruit, making his own chicken.
Painting gives his hometown more beautiful colors, and hometown gives him more happy life.
Nine Factions news reporter Wen Yanli
【Source: Jiupai News】