my pink toes

reflecting-icons
From my Illustrator class

I'm knee deep in Adobe tutorials, a fibro flare, and sick children, but I thought I'd post my latest project here (see black and white icons, above right), along with the intro I had to write for the class. I thought it would make a pretty good "About Me" segment and it made me laugh. so here you go:

I’m Leah Smith, a thirty-mumble mom of two boys, who at this moment are obsessed with weapons, Star Wars, and Pokemon. I taught 8th grade English and American History until 7½ years ago, when my first child was born (this is what I refer to as “my previous life”). I’ve always done desktop publishing (ah, PageMaker, I loved you!) and have loved color and design – unfortunately, I can’t draw anything more complicated than the Death Star, and even then my renderings are roundly criticized as “weird”, “not really a circle”, and “whatever, Mom”. I’ve also dabbled with HTML, CSS and website design, creating (well, modifying, really) websites (and business cards and logos and flyers) for myself and a few friends.

In my “next life” (once the little one goes to school full-time), I plan to either fulfill my childhood fantasy of becoming an astronaut, OR substitute teach part-time while I persue my dream of becoming a small-scale web- and print- designer who does a bit of writing and editing. Since the shuttle program has been scrapped, and I’ve never been so good with those pesky “math” thingies, I’m thinking the teaching/publishing gig is going to work out better for me.

Because I previously worked in a school (read: low technology budget) and have been a stay-at-home mom for nearly 8 years (read: have no money), I’ve been a bit behind in the whole Adobe Creative Suite revolution. My old computer wouldn’t run anything bigger than Illustrator 8.0 and refused point-blank to run Photoshop (not to mention any YouTube videos). We recently decided to bite the bullet and buy a new computer for me, and shell out for CS3 (the education discount helped considerably…on the software part). So, I am taking a few classes to get up to speed on this CS3 stuff all the kids are talking about these days. (I also have to take 15 credits to keep my teaching credential current, so it’s a win-win).

Every time I opened Illustrator in the past, I got hopelessly overwhelmed, cried a little, and then shut it down. I would open it every few months, thinking that last time I was just in the wrong mental frame, or underslept, or under the influence of too many martinis. I kept hoping my mad PageMaker skilz would transfer, but alas it was always the same story: open program….feel powerless….close program …cry a little…pour martini.

So, here I am – ready to learn this awesome Illustrator program “for reals”. I hope to overcome my fear of these math-sounding vector thingies and learn how to create cool, scaleable logos despite my complete lack of drawing ability. Maybe my boys will find my Illustrator-rendered Death Star more convincing.

Filed Under "Geeky Goodness, Teaching & Learning" on April 21, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

..at least in the eastern Seattle suburbs:

My class was cancelled. They could only get about 7 people to sign up for 3 sections, total. *Sigh*.

I was able to cancel one of the books (the expensive one, thankfully), but the other two are on their way. I'm bummed that I don't get to discuss the essays with other people. Maybe I'll try and push one of the collections on my book group.

And, sadly for this site, I won't be getting a lot of practice in writing better for now. (And considering how clunky that sentence was, lack of practice is a bad thing...)

But, in the way that life so often works, things have come about in the meantime to make this canceled class into a good thing. Crazy, huh? That's one of the big reasons I can't shake my faith in God. Believing "the Universe" conspired together in my favor just doesn't jive for me....Anyway, as I was saying, meanwhile, things have happened. Specifically, I am now the surprised and thrilled owner of a brand new refurbished computer. Actually, not just a new computer, but the computer of my dreams!

My current computer is from 2000 or 2001 and it's a bit curmudgeonly. It laughs at "YouTube", thinking it's some new-fangled thing those kids are doing these days. It refused point-blank to run Photoshop. Its speakers are from long before the iTunes era. I was quite willing to limp along because, well, I just didn't think we could justify purchasing a new one. But Dave has been obsessively checking the "Refurbished" portion of the Dell website and one day - there it was. Dave called me from work and rattled off the specs (killer processor - check.....high-speed video card - check....flamingo pink cover - check, check check!). We deliberated a long time finally putting it in the online shopping cart and hitting "charge". Dave just got a bonus, and although we still have some large, looming medical bills, we decided to just do it.

So what does this have to do with my class being cancelled? Well, now that I have a new computer, I can actually run Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign. Since one of things I think I may want to do when I grow up is Web Design and content managment (I've done a teeny bit already, but only with the crazy kluged-together tools I have...), I was really wanting to take some classes in the design tools I need to learn. So now I've enrolled in an Illustrator class at the local technical college. Of course, I still have to figure out how to buy the pen tablet and software I need want.... but that's a challenge for another day.

So the writing around here may not improve, but the graphics may!

Filed Under "Geeky Goodness" on March 20, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)