Contributing to another blog

I was asked awhile ago to contribute to a blog from a fellow forensic artist, Lisa Bailey.  I met her at an IAI workshop in Spokane Washington in 2010. She attended my workshop and gave me some great feedback.  She's a part of the forensic art group on Facebook and is involved in trying to provide great information for working artists and aspiring forensic artists.  Anyway, she asked me to contribute to her featured forensic artist section (askaforensicartist.com). I have been pretty busy with the Real Beauty Sketches campaign over the last few months and I haven't had the time to sit down and start writing.  This week I started writing and I learned something interesting. When I started writing about my apprenticeship and how I developed my technique I realized something. During my sketch sessions with Tom Macris (my mentor) I sat in the same office at a drafting table and sketched along with him as he interviewed eyewitnesses.  As I sketched I had no opportunity to collaborate with the eyewitness about any changes to my sketch.  This was a limitation of my composite art training with Tom.  Interestingly enough my sketches were remarkably similar to the sketch that Tom had completed.  I could have used the time to interact with the eyewitness and make some changes to my sketch that would have made it similar to Tom's. Ironically, this inability to interact and collaborate with the eyewitness to refine my sketch turned out to be something I was meant to do 20 years later.  You see, in the Real Beauty Sketches I was seated at a table with a curtain separating me from my subject. I was able to ask them questions to create a sketch. However, I wasn't able to collaborate with them to refine the sketch. Funny how things come back around and the old things become new things.