We just made our travel arrangements (before airfares got super-prohibitive) to fly from Seattle to the East Coast this fall for a week of painting the scenery of the Outer Banks, NC! My partner's folks have a beach house just south of Kitty Hawk and I didn't have to beg very hard to get to sign up when I saw that there was a pastels workshop there in October.

My days will begin @ 8:30am every morning, and end when "the light is done." This is pretty rigorous for me, and I am crossing my fingers that my pouch and my gut will behave long enough to enjoy this wonderful opportunity.

I wanted to share this because if anyone knows how to build up endurance and help prevent flares, I would love to hear your advice. Just this week I flared up out of the blue ... and this kind of pain and inconvenience just won't do if I am to be on my feet at the easel five days in a row! I am both excited and very nervous about this commitment.

Debra thats so exciting! I almost did a workshop in Tuscany 2 summers ago but decided it was just too much. You'll love it on the east coast, the scenery is perfect for pastels. It's beautiful over here. Sorry, I'm not really sure how you'd prevent flares, but I hope you don't have any and have a great time!

Debra,
I think that is very exciting! I remember seeing a piece that you painted in another post somewhere and it was amazing. I hope your workshop goes well. I don't have a lot of advice but sometimes when we are distracted and our mind is occupied we 'forget' about our pouches a bit.
I went back to work last week and was pleasantly surprised at how things went pouch-wise and bathroom-wise. I just have to keep reminding myself that noone else cares or is paying attention to my bathroom trips. I forget that regular-coloned people use the bathroom too! Stick with your safe foods and hopefully things will go smoothly

Dear Debra,

I don't have an answer to your question, but my husband is a plein air artist (oils) and I just wanted to wish you a wonderful trip and lots of beautiful results. (No rubbing them out, okay? Wait, you can't rub out pastels, can you? Or can you?)

Anyway, have fun!