🗓 8 classes from May 9 to July 11 , 2024 (no class on May 23 and May 30)
🕰️ Thursdays 6:30pm - 9pm
🗺 Fractal: 248 McKibbin Street Apartment 1G, Brooklyn
💰 Sliding scale of $90-$600
📋 Application: https://forms.gle/o7AX89h3Eoke7SqB8
👥 Class limited to 16 students
About the Illustrated Journal
From Leonardo da Vinci to Marie Curie, from Marcus Aurelius to Virginia Wolf, great men and women have kept journals. Journals can be impactful in so many ways: by serving as a place to reflect on our lives, to explore new ideas, to keep a record and leave a trace.
In this class we’ll be getting together with a cohort for an eight-week journey in keeping an illustrated journal, one which combines regular writing with an additional visual component.
- If you don’t yet keep a journal, this class will help you build a solid journaling habit, opening up a dimension of self-exploration.
- If you already do keep a journal in written form, this class will introduce you to visual journaling and its benefits: enhanced creativity and holistic thinking. Visual journaling is much more than just drawing in your journal; we’ll explore techniques like doodling, collage, calligraphy, mind mapping, diagramming, storyboarding, bullet journaling, and watercolor.
- If you are amongst the rare people who already keep an illustrated journal, this class will inspire you to try new techniques, and introduce you to like-minded friends and future creative collaborators.
Since most people are more familiar with writing than with drawing, there will be extra support for the visual part of visual journaling, with easy exercises designed to free us of any fear of drawing, and to reconnect us to the pleasure of drawing.
No experience necessary! If you don’t draw, we will be going over the rudiments. If you already draw, this class will energize and inspire your practice.
Each session will be divided into three main parts: warmup, practice, share.
Warmup: we’ll be doing rapid-fire exercises designed to get us over inhibitions. We’ll get into a playful, exploratory mood together. We’ll brainstorm prompts together that can guide our daily writing or drawing.
Practice: We’ll be diving deeper using longer exercises to develop our writing or drawing skills. Also, there will be a period where we can write or draw freely in our journals, side-by-side.
Share: this is where we break off into pairs or small groups to talk about how our project is going. We’ll also have a final group share where those who choose to can share an image or read a passage from their journal. Fractal University courses have a great track record for sparking new friendships, and I think sharing at such a level will only accelerate that process.
The project: Every participant is encouraged to define a project over the course of the ten weeks. It could be changing a habit, learning a new skill, creating a work of art, or even a professional project. The journal becomes a place to track our progress. And if we choose to share from our journal, our cohort members become accountability partners who witness and encourage our progress.
Homework: Each participant will make a pact to self to spend time daily with the journal. I suggest a minimum of 7 minutes. It’s so short that most people can find time for it! I personally link my journaling session to my morning coffee, so I never miss both.
Recommended art supplies: a hardbound dotted or unlined journal like the Leuchtturm A5, fine-line ink pen, 2B or mechanical pencil, mini-watercolor set (12 colors), water pen brush, binder clip. These relatively inexpensive supplies will continue to serve you well after the course is over!
Here are some spreads from Ulysses’s illustrated journals:
About the course instructor
Born in Vermont of Taiwanese parents, Ulysses Chuang studied cognitive science at Harvard University.
He has studied printmaking with Françoise Bricaut in Paris and oil painting with Ng Chung in Hong Kong. His art has been exhibited and sold in Hong Kong, Taipei and Paris.
He undertook the 3-year formal training in Alexander Technique at ETAPP (l'Ecole de Technique Alexander pour les Professeurs à Paris), training under Odyssée Gaveau, and received certification in 2014. He’s since taught the Alexander Technique to private students, at ETAPP, in workshops for singers in collaboration with French alto Marine Fribourg, and in a semester-long course at Fractal University.
He has studied and played chamber music for over a decade with Stéphane Leclerc, a student of Sergiu Celibidache's. He’s studied Taichi for multiple years each under Aijun Zhang and Yves Blanc, as well as Kinomichi with Takeharu Noro. He’s studied singing with Marc Mauillon, Germana Giannini, and Marine Fribourg.
He is an avid rock climber, and enjoys meditation and Contact Improvisation dance.
He journals almost every day, usually while drinking his morning cup of coffee.