While I was in the first winter of my apprenticeship in the home art studio, my owner was lucky enough to enrol on a 12 week free course one evening a week at her local college. It was in print making, and each week for the first five weeks the tutor demonstrated a different printmaking technique and students could have a go. For the remaining weeks, students were let free to use the equipment and experiment.

My owner-artist sometimes got a bit stressed-out by her day job, so this was a wonderful opportunity to escape into a wonderfully positive creative environment. As ever, I became a key feature in some of my owner's work from that time, as after work she was often lacking in energy to think of new ideas, but I was often on her mind, and my joy at exploring the garden on my own meant that there were roughly six million photos of me on her phone for easy use as an artistic reference.

The art tutor was wonderful, always finding something positive to give in her feedback. Her assistant was fantastic too...he had only just finished college himself and said that although he couldn't draw he loved art. He was great with technology and between them they encouraged both learning traditional techniques or embracing new technologies and methods. They encouraged learning from artists of the past but not being afraid to experiment and try new methods.

A key message was that it is not always the end result that matters, but the process. The other students on the course were varied in age, background and experience. One thing everyone all had in common was the need to have a time when they could escape other aspects of our lives that can drag us down over the dark winter months, and spend some time experimenting, enjoying colour and texture, not worrying about outcomes, and having the freedom to just have a go.

My owner always came back energised and full of ideas. She had a lot of 'failed' prints too, which I was given the job of sitting on. I did this very well, but every now and again they get taken out and we look through and decide which to use, sometimes as scrap paper and sometimes for use in collages. I gave her the idea to use some as backgrounds by adding some paw prints on top of a few of them.

Like my owner, I find that marks on paper can be very satisfying and sometimes that is the best reason for making art.