November 15

I brought home the above from my printmaking class tonight. It’s the first proof of a dry point print I made last week of a bat’s head. It’s kind of wonky-looking because in dry point you engrave into a piece of special card and you can’t see the marks you have made and you can’t erase any mistakes. You ink the card, run it through the press and hope for the best.

It could have been better if I had sketched and practiced an image to work with beforehand, (something I tell myself to do each week) but in reality Wednesday night just rolled around and at the last minute I found a scrap of photocopied paper in the studio showing different bats’ heads, so when the tutor came around to see what we would be working on I could say, ‘yeah, I’m really interested in these bat images…’

Being an art class it’s easy to see the standard of work that everyone is producing and it’s very easy to feel that everyone else’s stuff is so much better. Also being art there are people who are naturally good at it. Not being one of these people I put off trying a class for years, thinking if I can’t draw naturally, then what’s the point in trying to? But I guess I couldn’t let it go and as I once read, would someone not take French lessons because they couldn’t already speak French?

So I try to have realistic expectations about why I’m doing it and what will come from it. I go because I can spend a few hours each week being creative, and that’s about it. Sometimes a bat’s head is just a bat’s head.

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P.S. Melbourne – snow?! You have three weeks to lift your game!