Return!

I have returned!

My holiday, two weeks in Japan, was very enjoyable. We managed to cope with the various train journeys to the different places we were staying, but it showed me how much information you glean, even from a language that you don't understand, when it is written in the Roman script we use in the West. By contrast, while I find Japanese script beautiful, it tells me nothing at all. But we did it, helped by the presence of roman-script signs in most stations and very helpful locals!

Saw some amazing craft-works, beautiful buildings, woodblock printing, snow monkeys bathing in hot springs...many things which I hope will give me some new images to use in my painting. Kept a journal, including sketches, to remind me of stuff, photos too obviously. But in general I take dreadful photos. I'm not sure why. But whatever it is that makes you a good photographer I do not have it!

Still fighting the jet-lag right now. A nine hour difference is not a trivial thing!

Academia

I gave been in the academic half of my Pookery most of the past week. The flat I live in is basically circular, so I have one lovely curvy space, lined with windows, for painting, drawing, sewing - that one is my creative Pookery - and another on the other side of the stairs, where I have my desk, laptop and a reasonable percentage of my books, the intellectual ones anyway! And that is my academic Pookery.

I am trying to write a research proposal for a PhD - absolutely terrifying! You have obviously to write a professional looking thing, like you know what one should look like and while there is guidance available on what to put in it no-one tells you the trivial stuff like what the layout should look like. So I have been trawling through books and the Internet, trying to get of together a draft to looks halfway competent so I can send it to the guy who (I hope) will be my supervisor before I go on holiday next week. Otherwise there won't be time for him to comment and me to improve before before the deadline.

Mind you, if there is a good thing about deadlines it is that the pressure of them can help you get past fear sufficiently to make a start and, as I think I have mentioned before, a blank page/screen/canvas waiting for you to fill it is one of the scariest things!

So there you have it - I'll be away for two weeks and then I'll be back with, hopefully, lots of new inspiring stuff to talk about and create with.