Korean Folk Painting

My favorite co-teacher is leaving at the end of the school year and something she promised she would teach me is called Minhwa. This is a type of Korean fold painting. It's really beautiful and Songsil is really good at it. She has been painting it for years. So she decided to teach us how to paint it by making Christmas cards this year.

The first thing I find interesting is that it doesn't really use paint the way you might think. It more like watercolor in a way because it's just dried down loose pigment that is wet.

We first outlined the pattern we wanted to paint with a brush onto this paper that Songsil dyed herself.

After that, she showed us how to pick the colors and each step to painting each part.

I'm actually really shocked by how it all turned out. I would love to do it again. It was so relaxing for a Friday afternoon. I wanted to spend forever just painting, and I usually find painting tedious and get impatient with it after too long. I didn't even realize until it was time to go that we had actually spent two hours working on these things. One thing I know for sure. I am not giving this Christmas card to anyone. It is going to stay mine as a treasured memory and to remind me of my co-teacher.