Moving to a New Blog Space!

After years of keeping this blog space (though quite lazily), I decided to move my blog to a new space:

aramkimblog.tumblr.com

Please visit the new blog to find my sketches and notes in the future!!
Thank you, thank you. :)

[HAVE YOU EATEN?] Work In Progress

I am making a book about food and memories titled HAVE YOU EATEN?. It is the common greeting in Korea, and I am using it to bring up memories related food that I have eaten, to compose a sort of memoir. Images made so far can be seen here, though texts not included yet.

This is the most recent piece I am working on, about Bbopki (baked sugar, probably the cheapest and sweetest snack, obviously bad for your health but whatever, that I loved as a kid), and following piece is "how to make" page.

Brooklyn Botanical Garden on a Rainy Day

Hanging Plants with Tightly Woven Roots

Pond with Tropical Bamboos and Other Plants

A visit to Brooklyn Botanical Garden on a rainy Friday: It was cold and rainy, but magnolias were all in bloom and cherry blossoms were about to be. Beautiful contrast. Had to go indoor to draw though. It was a little too freezing to stand and draw outside. Would love to make another trip soon when cherry blossoms are all in bloom.

New Website:

Same address as before, 

New interior & new content. 

Speaking of Coffee Vending Machine..

I need to get my texts properly edited for my book project HAVE YOU EATEN? soon, so I was revising some texts I had already written. Somehow the most difficult subject to write about was the vending machine coffee, which was practically the starting point of this whole project. I just had too much to say and it wasn't organized and wasn't that interesting even to me. After a fruitless sitting down session in front of the computer screen for awhile, I just stood up to see what I wrote in 2008 when I made a preliminary painting for this project. (Of course I didn't know it was preliminary, then.)

I still remember I was painting this in 2008 after I became a junior in undergrad SVA. It was special because I did this for fun. I was always overwhelmed by loads of homework when I was in undergrad program, I never made anything for fun. I didn't have enough time for homework. But somehow, this piece made its way out. I was exploring with using gouache on black gessoed wood board, and with my favorite subject. Vending machine coffee had always been nostalgic to me and I just had fun making this. I remember my friend was pointing out bad anatomy and ugly cloths on people. It is a pretty bad painting. (Not that my paintings are any better now. *sob*) Still, somehow, this piece is one of a very few pieces that are out in my room. While pretty good pieces are in the drawer, this one is in fact on the shelf displayed.

When I revisited this piece and read what I wrote on the piece, I was a little surprised. So simple and yet it was actually much better and much closer to the essence of what I wanted to say than the writing piece I was struggling with. Maybe I felt about this subject much more vivid at that time. Still, am I going backwards or what?!

Coffee vending machine pieces after 5 years since the first piece:

A tiny cup of coffee that cost me 150 won (10 cents) ten years ago.

Coffee Break! Coffee was the bridge among people.