Seo Kang-Joon & Ink Paintings (수목화)

 Today, I went through most of the first chapter of my new Korean textbook. It was helpful for testing my listening skills, but I'm still not awesome at listening. Hmmm... some might say that's true in English as well, but that's not quite the same thing!

Watcher

I planned to start watching this drama a very long time ago (September or earlier, according to my blog post indicating that I wanted to see it). Why? Obvious... Seo Kang-Joon is my absolute favorite. His performances are always subtle and well done. He is also stunningly handsome. Like, really outrageous. 

I kept getting distracted all day by other things (cleaning, practicing Korean, GOT7 videos on YouTube, etc), so I haven't gotten very far. I took my very last break just now to write this blog post.

All I've got to say: Seo Kang-Joon models by accident pretty much continuously. Like, he makes any random outfit look like he's on the runway, and I feel like he could sell anything to anyone. It's not hard to see why he's a model too. Am I right?

So far, Watcher has been really good. But then, I just made it through episode one and it took all day. I can only handle small doses of Kang-Joon, I guess. He's too good.

Ink Paintings (수목화)

Today, while clarifying a few things with 김근영씨, I asked him what a whole set of random words meant. They were part of pronunciation/listening exercises, so the definitions weren't included. 

One of the words was 벼루, which he told me was an inkstone. Well, they were all weird random words (wild goose, roe deer, walnut... just misc. stuff). Of course, I knew roughly what all the things were... except an inkstone.

Apparently, they are used to mix dry ink and water for Chinese, Korean, and/or Japanese calligraphy. Some of them have super ornate designs carved into the stone too. Lovely. But here is a basic one:

So 근영 told me all about 수목화 too, and how kids in Korea learn how to do ink paintings in elementary school, just like we do with watercolor here. They're beautiful. 

The one below is by Minja Lee, and I just want to give an example that's really pretty (I will 100% remove it if asked--I'm not trying to make money with it or do anything wild, just share some pretty art).

I think it's beautiful. 김근영 thinks I should try it. I might have to, to be honest. I'm sure I'd be terrible at it, since it seems like it would require the same dilution and negative space as watercolors, which I'm terrible at using. But still... I might try it.

파이팅!