Korean Artist Puuung Captures What Real Love Looks Like

Puuung's Illustrations of Love in Everyday Moments

Archive feature, first published 2017-10-28.

Weddings and anniversaries offer love an obvious place in a picture. Puuung’s illustrations are interested in the days between them. The Korean artist brings attention to the gestures that can disappear into a routine: the small exchange or shared pause that would be easy to leave out of a more dramatic story. Those moments become the subject rather than the background.

“Love is something that everybody can relate to. And Love comes in ways that we can easily overlook in our daily lives. So, I try to find the meaning of love in our daily lives and make it into artwork,” she writes.

The statement explains why the ordinary setting matters. Love is being sought within daily life, so the drawing needs enough of that life around the characters for the gesture to feel at home. The scene does not have to become extraordinary before it deserves attention.

The days between the milestones

When she writes about finding love in daily life, Puuung describes a direction for her art rather than a formula for everyone’s relationship. The images follow that direction through particular scenes. They can prompt recognition, but their appeal does not depend on another couple copying the setting or behaving in precisely the same way. The detail matters because it belongs to the moment being drawn.

A small gesture can carry a picture when the surrounding elements give it room. The setting establishes a life already in progress, while the interaction brings one part of it into focus. Unlike a major milestone, the moment may have no obvious beginning or end outside the frame. The illustration gives it a boundary so that an otherwise passing act of attention can be noticed.

For another approach to turning ordinary moments into stories, read Bonnie Pang's IT Guy & ART Girl Relationship Comics.

The quiet pace of an ordinary moment

That choice also changes the pace of a romantic image. There may be little suspense about what happens next, and no grand declaration waiting to be delivered. The interest lies in how the characters occupy the moment together. A familiar room or object can support that feeling of continuity: this is a life with routines, not a stage assembled only for a special occasion. The quietness allows affection to appear through the way the scene is shared.

A setting with a life around it

The drawings leave space for a reader’s own associations without demanding them. One person may remember a similar routine; another may simply enjoy the atmosphere of the illustration. Both responses keep the work open. Its tenderness comes from the attention given to a small event, and from the suggestion that such events can matter even when nobody would ordinarily think to record them.

Links: she writes