I enrolled in a design class once. I figured graphic design would be a good place to start with as far as artistic fundamentals. Not knowing what I was getting into, I took Design I at ArtCenter at Night, because, of course, I wanted the best fundamentals.
Instead I learned that gouache is really, really hard to use to make flat, even-colored swatches which satisfy the professional painter who you have for a teacher, particularly if you've not painted beyond watercolors in elementary school.
It was fun, but suffice it to say that I am still very much a hacker; a painter, not so much. In any case, as a result of that experience, I gained a new level of empathic understanding for non-hackers dealing with technology. It was very much like an Excel macro programmer being dropped into a course on compilers at Stanford.
Instead I learned that gouache is really, really hard to use to make flat, even-colored swatches which satisfy the professional painter who you have for a teacher, particularly if you've not painted beyond watercolors in elementary school.
It was fun, but suffice it to say that I am still very much a hacker; a painter, not so much. In any case, as a result of that experience, I gained a new level of empathic understanding for non-hackers dealing with technology. It was very much like an Excel macro programmer being dropped into a course on compilers at Stanford.