ⓒ Chosun Media(Edit for Behance ver.)
NEW YEAR of EAST ASIA (干支 Illustration)
What is 干支
干支(Ganzhi) is the attribute given to the date, especially the year in East Asian culture.
A 'kanji' consists of a combination of two features, '十干(Sip-Gan)' and '十二支(Sip-i-ji)'.
'十干' is a properties of ten times, one of 十干 has number, Yin-Yang, and color.
'十二支' are twelve kinds of animal characters.
Of course, modern East Asian uses the calendar of the sun system. But in Korea where I live, many people still enjoy talking about 'Ganzhi'. For Instance, Every person has own animal by the year-date-time of the birthday. And One year has one 'Ganzhi', Many news media talk about it, around the beginning of a new year.
Also I have been drawing pictures of this theme for newspapers in last 10 years. The paintings were mainly made for children and education category.
The year of the Golden dog
2018 is the year of the golden dog. People wish warmth and richness in Golden dog’s Year. The model of this picture is Korean dog 'Jindo'.
Chim-Gu
‘Chim-Gu’ is the dog of the dead world. This dog catched bad ghosts for people, ghosts are afraid to the bell sound of a necklace with Chim-Gu. 'Chim-Gu' is not a character of Ganzhi. But in this work, it was introduced as a Korean traditional story about dog.
I have painted these variety small dogs for diversity.
On the other hand, this last work is drawn for 'The year of The Red Monkey (2016) '. A client wanted handmade painting, so I used real watercolors.
This character for 'Children Born in The Year of The White Tiger' and is a part of cover story for the freshmen of the elementary school.
Finally, those images are last printed. (Left: Kids Chosun daily/Right: Korean Education Newspaper)
