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10-26-03
Drove down to see mom and dad yesterday. They live just one hour down I-5, yet we managed to stay so busy we were couldn't find the time to visit for a couple months. Outside my wife and kids, my parents are my favorite people, yet here we are, going 2 months without seeing them. If I had to place blame on any one thing for my lack of attentiveness to my aging parents, it would be our teenagers. They have mini lives of their own now that run on separate schedules from the things that Sue and I would like to do. Clint has a car and can drive to see his friends, but Lisa needs our taxi services to see her friends. She used to have friends here in our housing development, but, for one reason or another, usually the rising incomes of the parents, they left to buy nicer homes in more expensive areas.
We, on the other hand have had lowering incomes as I pursue my dream of living off my muse, rather than being a blue collar slave. Still, our house is just fine, and I do like my job/career better now that I am paid, at least in part, for my creative mind, rather than the strength of my back and my ability (or lack thereof) to produce product at maximum volume per hour.
I do tend to wander in these narratives. In Olympia, we all went for a walk down the hill to the waterfront where a large part of the port area has been converted from blue collar warehouse jobs to jogging paths, marinas, latte stands and a farmers market. I guess it is progress, and my ability to remember when it was all shipping warehouses and timber yards is irrelevant. There is still a large ocean going ship terminal, with huge cranes for unloading container ships, but most of that business has moved North to Tacoma or Seattle and I rarely see a ship there. There is still, as there has been for a hundred years, a several square block area of logs stacked up in 50 foot piles awaiting export to Japan.
As we walked along enjoying the scenery we were amused by the fair like ambiance. We loitered for a while by a man playing a banjo surprisingly well. Another guy asked us several times if we wanted our portrait drawn. He showed me one of his pencil sketches, and it was quite good. He had the air and dress of a homeless person, but then again it might just have been that he wasn't playing with a full deck...the perfect artists personality.
My lesson Friday fell apart when I was unable to find my files on the network. The new network server was supposed to save the department money on software licenses, and it may well have done that but at the expense of chaos. On a good day, I can find my saved files, and sometimes I can even find my students files who have a different login and different access to the network. But Friday, because I'd stayed up until 1:30 AM refining the lesson plan, I was too tired to deal with the chaos in the new server based software network.
The students were following along as usual as I demonstrated the days lesson on the projector. When it came time to import the files I had exported from ImageReady into Dreamweaver, the files were nowhere to be found.
I looked in all three "my documents" folders: the network, the login and the local drive and they were missing. I went back to ImageReady, re-saved them and noted the path. Back in Dreamweaver, I tried to re-define my site and became hopelessly lost. The students sat waiting patiently for me to master the situation as the minutes dragged on and on. Finally, after twenty minutes I told them to forget about handing anything in next week, saying that if I couldn't figure it out, I could only imagine how hard it must be for them.
For the rest of the day I went around one on one trying to walk them through the process, but most of my students were still hopelessly lost trying to complete last weeks lesson, never mind this weeks debacle. I guess the bottom line is that because of the new network issues, I will have to slow down my week to week progress to accommodate the learning curve on the new network based software.
10-20-03
Rain is pouring down in buckets. Our dirt and gravel driveway is covered in places with several inches of water. I'm here in the house alone because it's Monday and I only work 4 days a week. The reality is I work 6 days a week, but I only have to be on campus Tuesday to Friday. I spent Sunday creating a new lesson plan for my Tuesday Portfolio class.
They are supposed to already know how to create and slice up a web page interface, and about half of them have already done it. The other half were showing signs of needing the material covered again in more depth. I talked to the lead instructor and he recommended covering the material again, commenting that anything I could teach them would be good. We would have been building interfaces anyway in a few weeks for their portfolio, so I will just postpone the cover letters lesson until next week.
I've taught this lesson in bits and pieces before, but never as a carefully put together, 13 page step by step printed tutorial complete with bulleted text and screen captures. The ability to slice up an interface in ImageReady and have it display in a browser with an expanding interface is an advanced skill; one I didn't learn until my boss demonstrated it for me on the job. I've taught a simpler version of the technique on a banner interface, but this latest lesson is a full screen interface with expanding columns on both sides.
I think my students are going to love it. Several of them are very creative and have active, inquiring minds. They will take the information and run with it, no doubt producing better work than I have done. For the rest, it will be a long lecture, with intensive one on one work during the lab. Still, it's a job, and I'm good at it. I enjoy sharing these little tricks with my students.
This morning I need to grade and write editing notes on a half dozen resumes that were handed in last week. These were rough cuts of their resumes, and several are very rough indeed. Where does one start? I mastered resumes a quarter century ago when I began clawing my way up the printing trade. Getting a job has very little to do with a good resume. It has much more to do with pounding the pavement, knowing your stuff, carrying some kind of proof that you know your stuff (like a portfolio) and being able to talk fluently about your skills.
Once I finish grading resumes I need to do re-read the chapter on drawing faces in our drawing textbook, then do a self portrait in a double mirror. Wednesday I will once again haul Lisa's two mirrors to school and demonstrate the craft of drawing a self portrait from the side view. I've done this bizarre little bit of showmanship twice before in quarters past. Very few of them seem to get faces.
No matter how many times I tell them the basic rules...for example, the eyes are positioned vertically in the middle of the head, they continue drawing faces as they always have and complain that they can't draw faces. I may peruse a few different drawing books to see if some other approaches would help. After that, I have a freelance project for a client that is overdue...I'm spread too thin.
10-17-03
Looking down the long hallway to the right I saw 6 students standing at easels. Looking to left were 4 more. It was a proud moment for me and my art class. I'd brought these students, in four short weeks from: "I can't draw at all", to "cool, let's go out in the hall and draw receding perspectives". Many of them even did a very decent job of rendering out the complex perspective angles.
I have two drawing classes, and my Thursday class seems to be the most determined...and talented. That's partly because the Thursday class has the 3D students who usually tend to be more open minded. Plus, their lead instructor in 3D Studio Max is very enthusiastic about my class. He was the one who talked the dean into offering a drawing class. Many of the students didn't really understand my lecture on perspective, but after a bit of one on one demonstration the light went on and they were able to begin drawing.
I'm also teaching ImageReady to a couple different classes. These students have had a variety of teachers cover the material, but for some reason it hasn't sunk in. I hope to have better luck. I think I might be a better hand holder than some of the other teachers...although that isn't necessarily a good thing. They won't get any hand holding on the job, but if we can't do it in school, where else will they get the one on one attention they need?
It's Friday night and I am still lost in the job. Teaching doesn't seem to be a job I can leave at the office. At least it pays better this quarter now that I have 4 classes. I can almost live on the wages now.
10-13-03
Once again I've had to choose between writing about my life and living it; hence, the 9 day gap in the journal. For seven of those days I was working non-stop. Monday is supposed to be my day off, but I was asked to substitute teach last Monday. It's Monday again, and I am off, but there are lesson plans to prepare.
Over the weekend I worked on a website for a freelance client. I'm pretty proud of how fast I was able to go from a Photoshop Interface to a sliced html file: 3 hours. In the next 7 hours I I created 9 more pages complete with Javascript rollovers, pop-up windows; in short, a working, navigatable rough cut of a complete web site.
My client will be very pleased. I'd promised her I would work on her site by the end of the week, despite how busy I was at school...and I delivered. I'm feeling the strain this morning from working seven days in a row...still, a little overtime never hurt anyone. About all I have left on her site is the Illustrator map and I may tackle that today.
I didn't spend the entire weekend doing web design. Saturday morning I worked from 9 to 3 on an aluminum pastel box. I consider it work, since it was in support of my art "business", but I enjoyed it so much that it was more like spending time with a hobby. Pastel boxes cost upwards of three hundred dollars, but I made this one for under twenty. It measures 21x18x1 inches and is made from one sixteenth inch aluminum sheet metal riveted together, reinforced and partitioned by aluminum angle stock.
Pastels are expensive ($2 to $4 each) and fragile. They are basically crayons for adults and one needs a very large collection to paint sellable works. I have my working box for the backpack, and my reserve box which stays home. The reserve pastels were the problem: they were spread out amongst 5 little wood and cardboard boxes and I was unable to accurately inventory my colors.
Typically I would run out of several colors in my working easel box, do a micky mouse check of my reserves and decide I needed to make an expensive trip to the art supply store, buying pastel sticks that, frequently, were hidden in reserves. Now I have a custom made reserves box big enough for my entire collection and I can easily see what I do and don't have.
I love to make things with my own hands. Creating things on computers, and even on paper with paints doesn't always cut it for me. I am a tool user (picture a monkey with a stick) and making things with tools gives me a pleasure I can't describe, much less justify. That's probably why I stuck with printing so long. It is very much a tool user trade.
When I finished the box, everyone was out, but one by one, as they returned from working (Clint) or shopping (Sue and Lisa) I showed them completed box like a proud parent with a new baby. They know how to humor me now, and uttered the appropriate Ooh's and Aahs. Clint was particularly impressed since he and I have made a couple aluminum boxes together for his stuff. But this one was my best box ever.
Art class is still very challenging. Wednesday and Thursday I tried to teach the students how to draw a carved wooden chair using the concept of negative space. One or two students per class are simply not getting it...not even a little. I've been racking my brain to find a way to reach them and coming up blank.They want to learn to draw, but all my lectures and lessons have bounced off their "I can't draw" attitude like arrows off an armored humvee.
I've not given up, I am simply re-evaluating my lessons to come up with something that will reach them. I heard a good one liner about teachers that those of us in the profession would do well to consider: You haven't taught until your students have learned.
10-4-03
Saturday morning is here finally. Clint is getting ready to go to the plant nursery where he works to support his Toyota Tacoma. He's been writing essays in high school (where he is a senior) for a college level writing class about the passage of time; in other words, he doesn't have any. I tried to explain to him that the reason he is short on time is his decision to buy his truck.
Senior year in high school can be a busy time. Regardless, he still has to come up with $270 a month for his car payments and insurance, plus any other expenses that may crop up like maintenance, saving for a canopy, etc. We won't even talk about the $900 kayak kit he just HAD to buy this summer that now sits semi abandoned out in the garage.
He did take on about a thousand dollars worth of side jobs, usually landscaping, during the summer to help cover the boat. Still, it seemed like every time I turned around he was leaving to work at some kind of job, and I was home a lot. Last quarter I only worked 2 days a week and spent the rest of the time studying Web Design software, getting ready for the job market.
Over the 3 week break, I accelerated my studies to the point where I was capable of professional work and was able to complete an interface for a client in 3 days. Because she has paid me for that work, I am now free to begin the html part of the site but I'm just getting up to speed with my busy teaching schedule this quarter.
This is the heaviest load I've ever had since beginning to teach 18 months ago. We had some people leave while at the same time our fall enrollment was quite high. As a consequence, I am teaching 4 full days a week and, for the first time I am approaching the money I used to earn printing. This week I've been asked to substitute teach on Monday for a 5 day week. 5 days is a euphemism because there is lesson planning time, not to mention grading that I usually do at home.
The drawing class I teach Wednesday and Thursday is the easiest to prepare for, but the hardest to teach. Drawing the artist out of people who are convinced they can't draw requires a bizarre mixture of psychology and showmanship, with some flat out begging thrown in for good measure. The obstinate ones sit there and stare at me blankly, drawing as they always have, trying not to fall asleep.
By the end of my second day of drawing class, I am drained. Fortunately my last day, Friday is Imageready which I can teach in my sleep. Press this button, drop that menu and magic will happen, guaranteed...unless the computer crashes.
We have a new server based network wherein the software is installed on the remote server, and the terminals are dumbed down. We started teaching before we learned how to use it and the inability to save our work has been a nightmare. There are at least 3 desktops now, multiple "My Documents" folders depending on your login, and about 70 password protected student folders, only 15 of which I can get into to grade projects.
We're having a meeting Wednesday to de-mystify the network. Why do I have the feeling I'll be even more confused afterward? I guess I'm just stressed out. With the money from the interface and the painting selling at the Puyallup fair I'm thinking about rewarding myself with some new art supplies up in Seattle: I'm running low on pastels, art paper and matt board.
I should spend it all on bills, but I think there is enough to feed my muse some crumbs.
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