Print-Making weekend course at TLC

Monday 14th October : currently, I am in Waikanae. I arrived here early Friday morning after travelling overnight on the bus. It was a good, but tiring journey so I spent most of my first day here resting and sleeping as you don't get much sleep on a bus! I am staying with my SIL and her beloved and so grateful for their hospitality. My BIL has been my faithful taxi-service, dropping me off at the railway station over the weekend so I could travel in to the city and then up to Taita for the print-making weekend course at The Learning Connexion. And he was waiting to pick me up at the end of a long day to bring me back to his home for a lovely hot meal, cooked by my SIL. What a blessing they both are!

The weekend's print-making course has has a wonderful experience. Overwhelming, inspiring, emotional and tiring...but all worth the journey! I learned a lot. About print making...just the basics which I'm still trying to understand (there's SO much to know..too much to absorb in a single weekend!) and about myself. Too be honest, I didn't cope very well and I feel disappointed in myself. Everyone around me seemed to have so much confidence and skill in what they were doing...me, I felt like I was floundering the whole time. Oh well....I guess, these things are different for everyone..and whose to say they didn't have those same feelings the first time they did a class?

So I have, to take home with me, some print templates I made, some embossed prints and some inked prints from the templates. I also have a small sheet of MDF to experiment with wood-cutting when I return...along with loads of ideas I got from observing what the other students where doing. I didn't take my camera so have no photos of the weekend's activities. It was a very wet and wild weekend, weatherise..though by the time I left to board the train home, the sun was out and the sky blue. Typical!

Tomorrow, and the rest of the week I plan on drawing, taking photos and hopefully visiting a few art galleries to inspire and stimulate my creativeness.