fall 2023
vrk's learning stuff: fall 2023 curriculum
vrk is learning stuff
alrighty so I did a retro with myself after Mini Printer Pal! I decided I want to spend the next phase of my time off honing my drawing & design skills.
vrk’s drawing & design skills, august 2023
I love what I make but I want to elevate my style
For the next few months, I’m gonna focus on learning 📚
Here is my curriculum~!
late summer 2023
Aug 16 - Sept 29
Design Fundamentals
• M & W
• Self-studying resources
Drawing warm-up
• Daily
• Sketch 1 real-life thing
Embedded Systems (remedial class)
• T & Th
• Building a fortune telling machine
Conversational Korean
• M-F mornings (best-effort)
• self-studying 30 min
fall 2023
Sept 30 - Dec 9
Drawing Fundamentals
• An actual drawing class!!
Like at a school!
Design con’t
• tbd
???
Conversational Korean
• same!
late summer 2023 schedule
Th
M
W
T
F
🇰🇷 Korean
✏️ 1m sketch
🇰🇷 Korean
✏️ 1m sketch
🇰🇷 Korean
✏️ 1m sketch
🇰🇷 Korean
✏️ 1m sketch
🇰🇷 Korean
✏️ 1m sketch
before “work”
🛠️ Hardware
🖼️ Design
😎 Free
🛠️ Hardware
🖼️ Design
during “work”
Check out the details below ⬇️
Design
I got so many great tips & books & other recommendations for learning design!!
(huge thanks to brilliant designer friends mariam and caro for many of these tips :D)
ty mariam for these excellent recommendations!!
for design thinking
for typography
on approach to
creative pursuits
recommended exercises:
copy existing designs
then modify them
mariam gave me an awesome specific exercise idea: try this with email layouts and then try adapting the style to zines!!
and caro gave a really cool tip, to save different of my design modifications and put them all next to each other so I can see how my designs changed over time
ask designer friends to critique my designs
how I’m approaching the “course”
mariam told me that many designers are self-taught actually - design is a new field after all - so I shouldn’t feel like I MUST formally take a class to be able to design well.
so my approach to learning design will be through
exploratory self-teaching!
• I’m gonna reserve Mondays & Wednesdays for design focus
• I’m just gonna read & study whatever strikes inspiration
• I’m gonna try to create make 1 little design every session
• I’m also making a stationery zine with my friend Isabella
so I’m gonna work on that during these days too!
Drawing
OK so super super interesting -
I asked the illustrators in my life (Aaron and Davis) how I might improve my drawing skills. They both recommended that I don’t try to self-teach and instead:
• Take an actual course
• That focuses on fundamentals
Aaron gave the recommendation to look at the art schools in NYC because they provide art classes that are actually quite affordable compared to the usual college course.
So I’m gonna do that!!!
how I’m approaching the “course”
• I’m literally enrolling in a course!! It will start roughly
beginning of October
• Before the course starts, I’m gonna try sketching 1
real-life thing a day (Davis’s A++ suggested prework!)
Embedded Systems (remedial class)
This is completely unrelated to drawing & design,
but it’s related to learning so it’s in my curriculum!
As some of you may know, I’m trying to build a fortune telling machine with my friends Aaron and Ryan!!
(The same Aaron I mentioned in the previous section!)
The concept is a fortune telling guitar pedal where you can use the knobs to answer a few questions, and afterwards your fortune prints out via receipt printer:
I’m the engineer on the project! I learned how do to all this hardware stuff in college... but welp I forgot everything 🤷♀️
I remember in school I did, like, math
and made circuits using math
These days I’m making circuits via, “what does this tutorial made for 6th graders tell me to do?”
Anywho my embedded systems goal is simply to know enough to finish the project!!!
how I’m approaching the “course”
(This is not because I don’t like hardware!! I’m actually enjoying it a ton. It’s just that tech is my comfort zone, so I don’t want to focus on this tooooo much right now!
my approach to this is to learn the bare minimum to be able to make a cool thing 😎
• I’m gonna reserve Tuesdays & Thursdays for hardware focus
• I’m gonna try putting together a prototype of what I’ve
discussed with Aaron and Ryan
• I’m gonna google & youtube whenever I get stuck
I’ll try chat-gpt too though it hasn’t been amazing for
hardware in my experience
• And hopefully not have to buy TOO many more parts from
Adafruit and PiHut 😭
Conversational Korean
I’m in total maintenance mode w.r.t. Korean learning right now!!
It’s just a little too much to juggle with everything else.
So for now, I’m just listening to podcasts for Korean learners,
and I’m gonna restart my italki 1:1 conversations.
the podcasts I’m
listening to:
a piece of korean
bibimchat
choi susu
how I’m approaching the “course”
Here’s my ideal Korean study schedule:
• Every morning, I spend 30 min studying Korean: first I
listen to a podcast, then I study whatever I feel like for
the rest of the time
• Every week, I also do a 30 min italki speaking practice
(though haven’t done this in a while!!)
Korean is my lowest priority study focus right now, so this is entirely a best-effort sorta thing!! I don’t stress if I can’t get to it.
that’s the plan!
So yeah! That’s my plan for the next couple of months!!
I think I’m gonna try to make little notes like these
as I go through my studies 📚
If you want to keep up with how my studies are going,
subscribe to my newsletter, vrklovespaper:
YAY
