Yeah....It's been over a year since my last journal. So sue me. I have been busy. I began student teaching January 7th and have roughly 6 weeks left. I've been teaching art at an inner city school here in Muncie, Indiana. I mainly teach 3 different classes, all 2-D art. The largest challenge is getting the students to care enough to do work.

I've taught lessons on still-lifes (BOO!), Contour Drawing, Picasso's Portraits, Willem De Kooning, Mosaic portraits, realistic portraits using oil pastels, Chuck Close, and upcoming illustration and Van Gogh paintings.

So, in about a month and a half, I will be a licensed art teacher and will hopefully have lined up a teaching job somewhere in this country. Though I wouldn't necessarily turn down teaching in Japan....


BWA HA HA HA HA . .. COUGH!

I have begun teaching Saturday art classes for my 3rd Art Ed class. I've taught one lesson so far and have six more to go. I'm halfway done with lessons on Zen gardens. After that will be Earth Art and then set design in the Lord of the Rings movies. I'm teaching 5th and 6th grade and the kids are pretty good. I taught the first lesson sick, but I'm better now, which is good, because it's a lot harder to get stuff done while sick. While I can't post pics of me teaching because of laws dealing with images of kids, I will post some images of the work from the class once I have some.

Well I have been in Muncie, Indiana for almost 3 weeks now. It really doesn't feel that long, but I guess it has been. Being in college as a postbac is kind of weird because I don't know many people and those that I meet are all 3 or 4 or MORE years younger than me. In that regards, it doesn't help that I only have 3 classes. But that does mean I have time for a job . . . if anyone here was hiring. So I've decided to use my free time to work on art. I've already finished my photo transfer onto aluminum (as in I finally framed it) and built a work table (all in 2 days for both). Now I've moved on to systematically work on my drawing by drawing every day. I've also been practicing my watercolors so that I can paint the self portrait which I drew about 6 months ago. I actually have plenty of materials for making art, I just need to MAKE it.

Countdown to the big move: 22 days. But man, does it seem like a lot less time. Probably because so much else is happening. Two of my friends show up this Saturday to hang out until the 22nd (One from Connecticut, the other from Florida). Then following that is Christmas, then a week later is New Years, then 5 days later, I move 3 hours away. So the time between is spent organizing and packing. I also still have one end table left to assemble. However, it's been so cold here (20 has been the warmest in about 3 weeks) that I haven't been able to work on it. I'm not worrying about the sanding or painting of the furniture until I've moved. I've also got a mobile workbench planned (tomorrow I cut the wood). Luckily that's just plywood and 2x4s, so it's just predrilling and then screwing things together once they're cut. All in all, a busy time for the Baka man.

So I'm in the midst of 3 major art projects. Well 4 if you want to be technical. I am making 2 end tables, of my design, a bookcase (Pretty normal, but I might do something interesting to it), and a photo transfer on aluminum. I am attempting to work on 2 at a time. Right now, I am about 2/3 finished with the first end table and about 2/3 finished with the photo transfer. I have 2 months to finish the furniture, which shouldn't be that difficult. Once I have the first photo transfer done, I plan on doing a number of smaller ones and maybe have time for another large piece...before moving. I'm hoping to finish the end table this week and be very close to finishing the photo transfer as well. Next week, I hope to have the photo transfer completed and the construction of the bookcase completed.