Drawing Bad, CSS Good

Broke down crying in drawing class this week. I just get so frustrated! I really want to do well in the class, and half the time I don't even understand what I'm doing wrong, or how to improve it. This week was particularly painful. I started crying after working with charcoal, so my hands were covered with the stuff, which transferred itself to my face. I looked like a 20s minstrel show performer.

Tonight I'm going to sit down and p-r-a-c-t-i-c-e some of this stuff. I don't really have the time, but I'm going to have to MAKE the time. This is something I've always wanted to do, and I'm not going to stop just because I'm horrible.

My CSS class, on the other hand, is doing pretty well. The XHTML Boot Camp went very well, and I liked the resulting assignments students turned in. After XHTML we moved into DIV vs SPAN, and CLASS vs ID, and BLOCK vs INLINE. We devoted a week to mastery of these concepts, then went on this week to the Box Model, experimenting with padding, margins, and borders. Next week is the broken box -and- background images, then I think we'll take a step back for font properties. After those are finished we'll get fancy and start using online resources by studying image replacement, floats and liquid layouts, absolute positioning, and more. I feel better about this class than I have in the past. I finally think I have a workable formula, and can turn it over to other instructors without fear. Maybe I'll let R. teach it next Fall as a test case.

Other classes are so-so. I'm moving too fast in my ActionScript class for one student, but the others are doing so well that I don't want to slow down much. I'm going to, though, this week. We have two simple programming techniques I've asked the students to work on, and those techniques (combined with their other knowledge) will let us make a classic "snake" game in class.

Web Animation I seems OK, but they aren't really doing much yet. I'll have to see on Wednesday how their symbols are developing. I want to start working them on animation, so I need to find an activity to keep ActionScript busy (but not frustrated) while I work with Web Animation students. I wish I could get enough students to teach the classes in different rooms at different times!