Seoul tattoo artist adapts Korean minhwa painting for tattoos
In Seoul, South Korea, tattoo artist Choi Hye-sol creates works in the style of minhwa, Korean folk painting. As The Korea Herald reports, the artist works by appointment at the Onsil Ink studio in Gwangjin-gu, which opened in 2021. By his own estimate, around 95% of his clients are now foreigners.
Demand for Korean motifs
In spring, a client from Canada contacted the studio and asked for an irworobongdo tattoo on his calf — a composition featuring the sun, moon and five peaks that once hung behind the throne of Joseon dynasty kings. According to the client, he had long wanted a minhwa tattoo and could not find an artist who did such work. The tattoo became a memory of Korea before he left the country.
Choi said that foreign clients often specifically order minhwa rather than simply tattoos in an ink-painting style. Minhwa is folk painting created mostly by common people of Joseon, rather than scholars and aristocrats. In the artist’s view, a characteristic feature of this style is humor: tigers are not depicted as frightening, while dokkaebi, characters from Korean folklore, are presented as comical rather than eerie.
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Motifs and sketches
Recurring motifs in the artist’s work include hojakdo featuring a magpie and a tiger, haetae, a guardian mythical creature, as well as birds from hwajodo compositions. Choi’s most recent work was an interpretation of a dokkaebi from gwimyeonwa — a roof tile with a fierce face that was placed at the edge of a traditional Korean roof to ward off misfortune from the home.
The tattoo artist does not copy old paintings, but studies their style and creates sketches according to the body part where the design will be applied. He explains to clients the meanings of motifs known to him, but does not build compositions exclusively around symbolism. Choi also noted that researching minhwa is not easy because of the limited number of visual sources: he uses Google, artificial intelligence and books, but rarely finds new materials.
The artist began working with minhwa in 2016 after watching a video by Korean artist Kim Sun-doo and studying for about two years at a Korean painting studio. Before that, he worked in an office, received no formal art education and learned various tattoo genres at the studio where he trained.
