Well, I've been in Des Moines for close to a week now, and I didn't do any sculpting until yesterday. It's not hard to find excuses - I worked long hours and was tired when I got back to my hotel room each night, but when I'm home, a hard day of work is actually more likely to make me sculpt, and there I have other responsibilities besides work. I think I've figured out why it was so hard for me to sculpt this past week, and that was a lack of space.

Ordinarily when I travel to Des Moines, I stay at the downtown Marriott, which is a fairly standard full-service Marriott, with normal size rooms. As an "elite" member of Marriott Rewards (translation: I travel a lot), I often get upgraded to larger rooms, but even the normal size rooms there have a large desk and a fair amount of space. In fact, I'm typing this from a room in the Des Moines Marriott, right now. I have my computer out, and all my sculpting stuff where I can just sit down and use it, and don't have to worry about shuffling things around But, I just checked in here yesterday. Last week, I was at a different hotel: the Renaissance Savery, which is another Marriott property.

Now, I like the Savery... a lot. It's an old hotel with a lot of character. There's absolutely nothing cookie cutter about it at all, and I don't think I've stayed in two rooms that were exactly the same there. Many of the rooms are extraordinarily large, and prior to this stay, every room I was in was at least as large as an ordinary modern hotel room, and on many occasions I was put into multi-room suites.

This past week, I found the downside of an "old hotel with a lot of character"; there are also some rooms that are ridiculously small, and I got one. I think they would ordinarily hesitate to put an elite guest in a room this small, but to be honest, with all the politicians in towns, I was lucky to get a room at all. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the room - but my camera didn't have a lens that was wide-angle enough. The bed practically touched the wall - I had to climb over the bed to get to my suitcase, and the closet door couldn't even open up all the way, making for a rather amusing scene each morning as I tried to get my hanging clothes out of it. The desk was tiny, and barely fit my laptop computer. It just wasn't practical to set up my sculpting stuff and leave it out, and at the end of the day it just seemed like too much effort to clean off the desk and pull out my sculpting stuff, only to know that when I was done, I would have to put it away again.

Now that I've moved hotels, I've got the luxury of more room and I've been sculpting in a lot of my free time. I'm working in small scale in epoxy putty, which is a medium I've gotten a bit rusty at, but it feels good to be doing something. In my next few posts, I will be posting some pictures of my progress for those who aren't familiar with sculpting in epoxy putty.

Take a lesson from my experience. If you want to sculpt, the best thing you can do for yourself is to find a dedicated space. It doesn't have to be much - even a corner of an unused table or an old door suspended across two sawhorses in the basement (that may sound silly, but my first dedicated space was basically just that). Good lighting is important, as is being comfortable in your spot, but the most important thing is to have the ability to leave stuff if out you want to. I'm not saying that you shouldn't clean up after yourself, but you shouldn't always have to clean up everything if you're in the middle of a sculpt. If you can leave some stuff out, you're far more likely to fit in short sculpting sessions when you have short periods of free time.

Also... and I know a few people disagree with me on this, but I believe for most people it is sound advice: Don't sculpt at your computer, because nothing will distract you from sculpting more than the internet.