Saturday at the Printmaking Table

I arrived certain that I was not an artist. The instructor handed me a small block, a pencil, and a piece of paper, then asked me to draw a leaf from memory. There was no test and no perfect example to copy. At the printmaking table, we learned that a picture changes each time it meets the paper. My first impression was uneven. The next had too much ink. On the third try, the leaf appeared with tiny white lines I had not planned, and suddenly the mistakes felt like part of the image. We laid our prints on the floor to dry. Everyone's leaf looked different, although we had started with the same instructions. I took mine home and put it on the refrigerator. It was a small thing, but it changed the way I thought about making. This is fictional demo content, not a verified workshop or historical event.