The patience in each stroke in Minhwa

For about three to four months now, I have been learning Minhwa, which translates to Korean traditional folk painting.

I have never formally learned painting before like this where you go to a weekly class and be taught in person by a teacher. I always dabbled decently at drawing with pens, but painting came across much harder. So I usually did drawings. Never have I ever thought that my first real bit of art school experience would end up taking place in such a niche practice.

Minhwa is a relatively a new phenomenon in Korea as well. It’s been active in the early 19th century, went away, and made a comeback in the last few years or so. There is still a lot of people in Korea, majority of the population I dare say, that are unfamiliar with Minhwa or at least think of it as a novelty. (This is a very facinating topic that I’ve been ruminating for a while — I will save the story for another post in the future.)

I am also very new to it. Well, it is only natural that I am very new to it since I have been living in America for almost two decades now. I’ve only been introduced to it somewhat through social media and then went to an in-person exhibition in Korea last year. I imagined I would learn it via internet using commonly found Western materials like gouache. But the opportunity to learn the actual real deal in person presented itself, and I gave it a go.

I met my first challenge at an unexpected place. So naive. The teacher lent me her brush for me to draw the outlines of the painting as a foundation. When I started and tried my best, the best turned out to be that I didn’t even know how to hold the brush. I held the brush in my hand like I was holding a pen.

My muscles relearned how to make clean line work with a totally different medium. Brushes hold much more delicate conversations with the hand and wrist than pens do. By that I mean that even the tiniest change in the pressure applied to the brush creates a very obvious line weight that affects the message of the line visible on the paper. Pens are bit more dense, especially the denser pens like Microns where the tip is blunt to begin with. On the other hand, the tip of the brush is so fine and you have to move your hand and wrist and arm and elbow altogether methodically to be in total control of your line. And you do that over and over and over again until you are done with the base outline of the whole painting. For a large size work (something around 24”x36”), it could take me up to 3 hours to do just that outline.

My patience gets tested at each stroke. When I get tired, it shows up on the paper. The failure to control impatience humbles me. I go back to being careful.

It’s a whole journey that takes a lot of time and attention at each stage. If anything, I am happy to know that my energy and time is spent somewhere meaningful.