BY MARGOT HARRIS
Illustrator Andrew Hou just set the bar for all your future significant others. Hou struggled to express his love for his wife verbally because of a slight language barrier — he was born in Canada while his wife, Kate, is Korean. “Korean not being my native tongue didn’t help,” he told The Huffington Post. “So making silly, sappy doodles was my workaround for the problem.”
AND SO THE ILLUSTRATION SERIES “HJ-STORY” BEGAN.
HJ are the initials of his wife’s Korean name. Swoon. While the project began as a personal blog back in 2010, it developed a large fan base pretty quickly.
THE DRAWINGS ARE SIMPLE, BUT THEY’RE PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE’S RELATIONSHIP GOALS.
These heartwarming doodles weren’t the first illustrations inspired by HJ. When Andrew and Kate first started dating, he would send her artwork to stay connected. “[Kate] was busy with school and I was busy with work, so we didn’t have a lot of time to meet up or even talk on the phone,” he said. “So during work, I’d pretend to be ‘working’ and create these tiny doodles and send it to her on her cellphone.” Okay, Andrew. I’ll just be here swiping through creepy tinder messages.
Hou began posting the doodles online. Eventually he turned his sketches into the finalized drawings that have given you hope that love is real.
If your heart isn’t exploding already, listen to what he has to say about his motivation behind the project. “We’re all so busy and caught up in everything that we forget about the little moments that are important — myself included,” he told The Huffington Post. “Drawing HJ-Story for me is not only to capture the moments of a relationship, but to remind me of the little moments that are easily forgotten.”
You can see more of Hou’s doodles on his Facebook and Instagram. And if you’re trying to win some major points with your significant other, you could always purchase his book.
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