Take one thing at a time.

Take one thing at a time

    Finally, we will have pets after  15 years of immigrant life. As a small pet, fish was all I was trying to raise properly. So I was already scared.

  When I was a child, there were various animals in my house. Chickens, cats, dogs, birds, fish, rabbits, etc. were raised from infancy and cared until crossing the Rainbow Bridge. Because the time I spent with animals was so precious and had wonderful memories, I often draw them with longing.

 Below is a drawing of a budgerigar. Budgerigar, also known as the common parakeet or shell parakeet, is a small, long-tailed, seed-eating parrot usually nicknamed the budgie, or in American English, the parakeet. Budgies are the only species in the genus Melopsittacus.

 Parakeets chest and belly have  beautiful colored feathers, such as light blue, green, and pink,   I enjoyed watching and drawing parakeets as a child. The color of the parakeet's feathers is like vivid paint color from squeezing paint on a palette and coloring it with a brush.
 
  The lovebirds I met when I was a child were so beautiful, and in those beautiful memories, I also had memories of my father, who passed away early.
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 With my old memories, my father made a nest for parakeets by rubbing dry grass. I remember seeing a house built in a matter of minutes and admiring it.

  ​I went back to my memory and collected pictures of animals among the past pictures.

  I used to draw animals with nostalgia and longing for my father as a child like this, but I couldn't draw animals exclusively.

 ​However, some painters from the Joseon Dynasty in Korea only painted cats all their lives.

  ​He was 'Byun Sang-byeok', a Korean painter in the late Joseon Dynasty. He drew a particularly good picture of changing cats and chickens, and was nicknamed “byun cat” or “byun-gye”. It was evaluated that it depicts the characteristics of animals that are difficult to do well.

However, even the changer who was called the master of cat drawings was not good at drawing cats from the beginning. Byeon Sang-byeok, who originally drew landscape paintings, is said to have been frustrated by the fact that there were many painters who could draw landscapes better than him, and then thought about what kind of painting could be better than them.

Then one day, he was fascinated by the cats that he could easily see around the house, and from then on he drew pictures of cats every day. In this way, Sang-byeok, who used to paint a cat, became an artist who can depict not only the appearance of a cat, but also the habits and emotions of a cat.

Source by Tokyo National Museum

Source by National Museum of Korea

  He was a cat man who raised and loved cats. He lamented and depressed that he had no talent to surpass other painters, and then he began to paint cats, seeing a cat always watching and comforting him by his side. At that time, the people of the Joseon Dynasty considered the cat painting to be a symbol of longevity and wanted to hang it at home. Later, he won the favor of the king and achieved social success.

 If you look closely at his paintings, the description of the cat's facial expressions and postures is surprising. Still, above all, his handwriting, which carefully describes each hair, is even more stunning. It's not a stiff canvas, and Asian paintings were drawn on paper that absorbs paint well, but how long he had observed the cats. 

  ​When I look at the works and lives of these artists, I discover the importance of consistently drawing with my own unique handwriting. Could he have been reborn as a cat painter if he had only looked at, compared, and despaired of other artists' paintings, weighing his talents here and there?