Snowman and Art.

Snowman, 2022, Myungja Anna Koh

Snowman and Art.

  ​Last week, we made Snowman with our child. In this way, children and snowmen are made in various shapes every winter. Making Snowman, it is challenging to clump together if you use powder snow blown away easily. I am used to making the same mistake as always. Instead, when it warms up in the afternoon after snowing, the snow crystals melt and change into a sticky shape with moisture that is easy to stick together. 

Snow becomes most suitable for packing when it approaches its melting point and becomes moist and compact. Making a snowman of powdered snow is difficult since it will not stick to itself, and if the temperature of packing snowdrops, it will form an unusable denser form of powdered snow called the crust. Thus, an excellent time to build a snowman may be the next warm afternoon directly following a snowfall with sufficient snow. Using more compact snow allows constructing a giant snowball by simply rolling it until it grows to the desired size. source by Wikipedia

  ​Snowmen made in this way are born in different shapes depending on the shape and temperature of the snow that fell that year. And the surrounding materials also play a role.

  ​This year, I made a funny snowman like this. I took pictures of the snowmen my child and husband made. Then, seeing the Snowman I made this year, I thought I wanted to make it into a character. I took the picture I took and went to the studio to finish simple work with Photoshop.

  ​It would be good to create a character like this and give it a name for the Snowman of the year. The Snowman disappears, and the photos can be annoying to look at, but the character we gave it a name seems like it will last a long time. This character's name is Snowman Jessica.

  ​Jessica's age is set at 4, she's very curious and is hoping that the first snow will stick to her body and grow bigger.

  Now let's get back to painting and art. Among the painters, one of the best painters of snowmen is Thomas Kinkade, who is called a Christmas painter. 

Source by Tomas Kinkade's official site.

  Actually, from the point of view of the painting, Snowman is not a good subject for painting. It is because the Snowman itself is like a toy and has an animation-like atmosphere, so the moment you put a snowman in the picture, you have to be prepared that the message and weight of the picture itself will change.

 ​However, the Snowman in Thomas Kinkade's warm painting looks different. Rather, it blended well with the painting and became part of the beautiful painting. Something seems to tell us that the Snowman is no longer a toy or decoration but a part of our lives.

  There is a picture of such a snowman from a slightly different perspective. It is an illustration of a snowman drawn in a children's story book. 

 The Snowman is a wordless children's picture book by British author Raymond Briggs, first published in 1978 by Hamish Hamilton in the United Kingdom, and published by Random House in the United States in November of the same year. (Wikipedia)
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First Edition image source by Wikipedia.

  The drawing style of Raymond Briggs got rid of strong lines and strokes, and made the picture overall soft and bleary. Maybe that's why the snowman in the picture looks like a friendly uncle in our neighborhood.

https://tygertale.com/2014/12/08/the-snowman-by-raymond-briggs-4/

  The author had drawn this picture book with deep philosophy because he thought that Snowman was not a Christmas exclusive, but learned to die through the process of being made and melted. 

   Maybe that's why people feel inexpressible sadness and compassion when the snowman they've worked so hard for melts away.

  The snowman that everyone loves, regardless of whether it is an adult or a child, draws a picture, makes a doll, makes a movie, makes a book, and the image of the snowman seems to accumulate in our memories one after another.

 ​It is as if the shape of the snowman that is made differs depending on the temperature of the day and the characteristics, material, and shape of the snow crystals. This is the subject of a snowman, so it becomes a trigger for endless imagination.