Snowflake Challenge #2

[ratcreature]

Challenge #2: In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.

1. Practice digital drawing with the smart pen I got for my tablet last year, that I've barely used. Bonus would be to actually post some fanart.


2. Put more consistent effort into studying Russian again. The last months (probably a year even) I've done barely anything aside from a course once a week and the associated homework, which really isn't enough to make progress in a language. So the goal is to get back to making Anki cards, and revising with them, get back to listening to Russian podcasts, and other other language input, like actually read some of the easy readers I have acquired.

Comments

here from Snowflake

[flamingsword]

Good luck with the goal of art and fanart! I am always amazed at how skilled people are who can make anything look recognizeable. Most people who can't draw are, I think. So you have a built-in audience already.

I have a friend that is learning French, and they watch children's cartoons. The characters speak more slowly, the storylines are easy to follow along even without a complete grasp of the language, and they're trying to teach children to speak without a lot of slang and idioms that native speakers use when talking to each other but which confuse foreigners. I don't know that this will help you, but if you like neat art styles, some Russian cartoons look very cool, with styles not found in the West.

https://www.thoughtco.com/russian-cartoons-language-learners-4178973

Re: here from Snowflake

[ratcreature]

Thanks for the cartoon link. I've watched some of these, but others are unfamiliar.

[komadori]

Good luck with your art and learning Russian!

[pronker]

Best wishes on your goals - the smart pen will, I hope, prove quick to learn. And maybe this anecdote will help re Russian? Youngest's roommate teaches his 4 year old the Cyrillic alphabet with magnetized letters on their refrigerator.

[ratcreature]

Digital pens feel quite different from drawing on paper I find. In the past with my graphic tablet I've mostly done inking so just more or less traced scanned drawings. I'd like to get to real digital drawing and hope to be able to draw on a screen on my device might make it easier, but while it's easier visually, the glass surface is so slick.

Cyrillic letters aren't difficult to learn. There's the minor problem that some letters that look like Latin ones make entirely different sounds, but then the German W doesn't sound like the English W either. I considered the thing where you put post-its on your household items to help memorizing vocabulary. It's a bit messy though, and I mostly know those words by now anyway. Though maybe narrating actions to myself might help reinforce the cases.

I'm at that A2/B1 intermediate level that is a bit of a slog, because you have gotten all the low hanging fruit you get when you start with a language, but don't yet have the vocabulary to just read books and watch TV, or talk freely, but just have to grind. I got stuck at that stage with both French and Spanish.