Under a Burnished Moon

I had two failures at printing today - I ruined a plate I've been working on for ages, and also I had taken a piece of zinc home to try drypoint on (for those who don't know, drypoint is where you scratch directly onto the metal instead of through a ground followed by biting the lines with acid). The drypoint really hurt my hands (I have trouble with my joints anyway) and then when I came to print it today, the pressure was too light and it didn't come out very well. You don't get many prints off a drypoint anyway because the burr wears away (and it's the burr that gives a lovely soft line). So I gave up on it. The print above was almost a failure too - originally I'd done the moon using chine colle, but the blue ink made it a horrible muddy colour - I was about to go home but then decided to try burnishing it instead, and I think it worked out OK.

Luckily I have much more patience with creative things than I used to when I was little. In fact I have loads more patience with creative things than with absolutely any other aspect of life. Put a slow-moving queue in front of me and I am foaming at the mouth within seconds!