Sweet January

Hello everyone! Purely on a whim I decided to write this post in English. ^^

With a beginning of a year in Japan is the beginning of the last month of school, so uni closed it's studio for us in the last week of January.

But before that I had some very nice time with friends for Serbian Christmas. We had a doughnuts night at my place which turned out to be a complete indulgence in sweets of all kinds. Well not all kinds, but apart from delicious, delicious homemade doughnuts, we had chocolate mousse and since I was homesick for some Serbian sweets I made a cake called bajadera for this delightful occasion! ^^

The look of complete enjoyment! :)

And main cook posing for the photo.

Can't be in the house all the time so I go out occasionally. By going out I mean using a train to get somewhere I can't go with my bike :D

Enjoying an evening atmosphere in Omotesando hills in cold winter night with my Serbian friends!

No fun without food of course... Tasty, interesting food texture. Three bites for 600yen, as one would expect from Omotesando....

For the first time (if I remember well) I was modeling to someone for photo shooting. Friends are studying photography so they needed a model for some school assignment so my friend and I posed for them! Exciting it was - to look at people faces while they were passing by us in curiosity, I think it had something to do with the old style positive taking camera. Some even approached just to take a look at the camera.

This photo is taken by Ueno zoo. It's just on the other side of the gates actually.

This lace is part of the school campus in Ueno.

Photo courtesy of Valerie :)

After the shooting we all went to the concert of a friend who plays shakuhachi, a traditional Japanese bamboo flute. Very peculiar instrument. Apparently some people can't even make a sound for the whole month of blowing into this flute. Tough instrument, heh.

My lovely photographers! :)

This month is my last month for preparations for entrance exam which I'm planning to take this February, so it's quite unfortunate that I didn't have more time to show around town my new friend from Serbia. This was first time meeting a Japanese person for him, and an interesting time it was! In what language they were conversing, I'm not sure myself, but they were doing it successfully! :D

They paid a visit to my studio too. Although there was nothing interesting, I was already packing my things to move them to my place.

Pretending to paint :)

Why I'm putting this next photo is because of a very sentimental reason. I heard that this building hasn't changed at all since the seventies, so I thought maybe they will tear it down soon and I want to have a memory of this ugly thing :)

Just across the street is Ueno train station and this Italian restaurant below tracks. A decent place! :) Unlike the building across the street. :D

I know it's snowing now in Serbia and that's normal, but it snowed in Tokyo too! They say it usually doesn't, but it was only for one night anyway so it already melted :D

As I mentioned, I moved all my material from school to my place and lovely people from my atelier brought it with this rented truck!

Since I'm sharing my flat I can't leave painting material anywhere else but in my room. It's kind of tight now, but I'm in good relationship with my paintings so it's ooookaaay. :D

Painting on the floor, enjoying the sunlight in my room. I always wanted to live on the top floor and now I do! A funny angle of my painting. This was when I was just starting it, so there is nothing on the surface yet but the beautiful texture of Japanese paper. This time I used Tosa mashi.

The air is quite dry in winter so I had one painting cracking on me, I'm not going to allow that to happen again. This time I'm mixing two different whites for the base layer. One is gofun (fine white pigment made from shells), which is traditionally used, and the the other on the right (if you can see any difference in colour) is Unmo white number1 (number 1 means the grain is very coarse). Unmo tends to be sparkly and I like sparkly! :)

Ding dong! A delivery! Long awaited one! They don't sell my shoe size for ladies in Japan, so if I want shoes I have to get them online from other countries which have big-footed girls like me.

Back to paper! Can you see this wonderful surface?

Can you see tiny sparkly particles on the surface of the paper? It's like magic! :D

Anyway, I have to relax a bit too, or concentrate more, not sure. I still have that bad habit to look at the night sky while strolling. Sometimes I bump into things and one time there was a maniac stalking on me and my nutty friend and I wasn't really aware that it was a bad time to look at the night sky. :D

This cloud looks like a face.

In the end I had to thoroughly clean my atelier in school and say farewell to it, because next year if I hopefully pass the exam I probably wouldn't be in the same place. Now, as one friend said, I have to visualize my success in order to succeed! ^^

Until next time!

I really want to quote Truman now! Here it goes:

Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!

Pozdrav svima ;)