An artist is very sensitive to visual cues - like, say, noticing that a river is rarely blue but can be almost black, (or almost white), depending on the time of year and weather conditions; that the outline of a snowy mountain can be very faint to non-existent, if there is low cloud; that snow perfectly defines their underlying form - so that you can see more clearly the detail of gullies etc - that sort of thing. There are always multiple ways of approaching a painting from an artist's point of view. Also an artist is allowed to exert their own interpretation, which again depends on many factors, including their mood on any particular day! This endless variety of possibilities is delicious in its complication! And then there's composition - how do you want the finished painting arranged? What size should it be? What shape should it be? Which colours should be more prominent?

I get all that. It's the time taken to reach the solution that's so absorbing! Artists are sensitive souls. But when folk talk about gut feeling being like a human's 6th sense, I get a bit lost. Like I have a gut feeling about what the time might be, if I don't have a watch, but in terms of using a gut feeling to deal with a situation - well, that's different. It's an instant decide-now thing. Trust your feelings and hope they're proper reliable instincts - but how do you know, when there's no visual clues?

Hindsight is also something I'm not a fan of. It's always at the end of things, with a told-you-so sneer to it. Like you were always being given clues, but you just stupidly ignored them!

But I am a fan of happily-ever-after. I'm a sucker for it! I can't stand a novel with an ambiguous ending, or worse, a novel (or drama) that invites you to come to your own conclusion. That's a cop-out in my book - like the writer can't be bothered doing the whole job himself! It's like writing a letter, putting it in an envelope, but not bothering to address it. Pointless. Just give me a happy resolution every time. Really, I'm just a daydreamy kid with a crayon!!