Realization of an "Artistic" Sort

Oh my, it's been almost a month since my last entry!  First there were computer problems that necessitated the installation of a new hard drive, anti-virus program (which should have been on all ready but wasn't), and finally, a return to Geek Squad because a virus was still lurking. And if that weren't enough to delay my entries, D and I went to D.C. for a week.

Now we are back, and life is beginning to return to normal.  I do have photos from D.C. which I will share over the next weeks, but today I want to talk about other things.  On our trip to Washington, I took drawing materials with the firm intention of doing some en plein air (art done outside) work.  That is something I have very little experience doing; you may have noticed that I work from photographs a lot - rarely out in front of my subject.  So I took what I would need to do that sort of sketching with me.

I've written before about obvious solutions, conclusions, realizations, that take me an embarrassingly  very long to arrive at, and this is one of them.  By the end of the week in D.C., I had only one sketch - that of the interior of our hotel room completed one evening while I was alone. 

The last part of that sentence was my "Aha!" moment.  I was alone when I got out my drawing materials!  

Almost all of my time I was with another woman in friendly companionship as we traveled around from site to site.  Almost every evening, I was in the hotel with D and sometimes others who were there for the same meeting he was.  I didn't have the opportunity to sit alone on a bench on the Mall, garden, museum, metro station, or hotel lobby and work in silent concentration on drawing.  When with people, I expected to be social, to converse, to listen.  "Silent concentration" would effectively shut others out and be rude.  Had I been traveling with other artists or with D at a time when he would be immersed in his own interests, I would have allowed myself to close myself off and focus on drawing.

Will I take art materials with me when I travel again?  Yes, always.  There is always a chance that the right opportunity will occur, but if I return home with blank pages, I won't be upset for now I understand why.