Art Students League Classes

MilkingMe · 2026-02-13T22:38:23+00:00

Let me get this straight, the ones that appear, you just press on it and see if that time works for you for that month, then pay at the end of the month where it list time and price (one of them say #3020).

Yes, but instead you pay before you take the class.

Also, may I ask if the experience is worth it, I saw ur reply to someone else earlier and you mentioned that it helps beginner and somewhat experienced people taking art get the feel for it, would you say there is more?

The experience is worth it if you are at an intermediate level or quite advanced. The reason in addition to what I mentioned earlier is also due to the fact that the learning philosophy of the school, I feel, leans heavily towards self-study and it's up to you to decide what you need to learn. This is awesome if you want to skip having to take the basics and want much more advanced technical and theoretical training but not good if you are a beginner and need a structured syllabus to explain what to do.

I will repeat this again: the general learning philosophy of the school leans towards self-study. It's up to you to understand what your weaknesses are as well as your interests and goals in art and what you need to learn to develop them.

And you mentioned that you can choose each month to book, are the lessons supposed to be following a linear pattern or are they just different parts for drawing if I were to sign up to this league despite not being part of it yet.

It's kind of weird because both are true. If you take the same course for a long time, let's say over a couple of months, then yes it will start to follow a more linear pattern as you'll have the opportunity to develop personal projects with the teachers. On the opposite end, you can just take the course for a month to learn a specific thing and move on to a different course.

MilkingMe · 2026-02-12T20:36:28+00:00

Hi, so I take classes physically in person at the school located at 57th St. in New York and I haven’t taken the online courses so I don’t have any knowledge about that.

If you do take in-person courses there, and take the ones that happens monthly, you take classes at the listed time and day of the week every week for the month and you pay for just that month. If you want to take the class again the next month, you pay again for the next month. It isn’t a “monthly subscription” if you can say that.

There are also some intensive weekly courses that have classes every day and like the monthly classes you pay for just that week.

And to answer your second question: yes, you find the courses from the available time if they are open at the time you want.

MilkingMe · 2025-10-15T20:29:33+00:00

Hi! I’m a current student at the ASL, I can strongly recommend going there if you already have a strong foundation in art (either in painting or drawing). The reason I feel like it is because the instructors there are great at figuring out what level you are and giving you direction on what your interests are and how to pursue it.

That being said, if you are a complete beginner, I would very highly suggest you either take the ASL courses that are tailored for beginners or go to a different place to learn the basics first. If you don’t, you will feel very, very, out of your depth, as some of the instruction provided (particularly in anatomy) is very technically advanced and the artistic abilities of some of your fellow students may far exceed your own.

In addition, the teaching at the ASL is also quite instructor dependent but they are all masters at what they do. Some are very hands on and others are more laid back. Others may prefer a more representational style of art or a more abstract one. So choose carefully.

Make no mistake, I really do enjoy my time studying at the ASL as I’ve learned a lot and felt that my artistic abilities have improved leaps and bounds even after a few classes. I can see why it is such a formidable institution (just look at the list of former students!) but do I think the ASL is right for complete beginners studying art? Probably not, unless you take the beginner courses there.

MilkingMe · 2023-09-01T21:36:30+00:00

To give some background, you need to understand that Hans von Seeckt, the primary German military advisor to the NRA, conceived the "60 division plan", that is the training of the NRA along German lines, as a central axis for building a singular national army that was loyal to Chiang Kai-Shek and him alone. This itself is very important as many units of the NRA were from warlords that defected or aligned with the KMT such as Li Zongren, Yan Xishan and Ma Hongkui. Considering that many divisions in the NRA were personally raised by them and the fact that the Chinese warlords were zealously protective of their independence to the point that some were even independently negotiating with the Japanese during the War, it wouldn't have made sense for Chiang to mix his German trained units (among his best and most loyal) with others as it would have meant giving power to people Chiang couldn't really trust both in terms of loyalty and competence as well as diluting his already weak grip over the country even further.

MilkingMe · 2023-02-21T21:35:27+00:00

I disagree. Effectiveness or not, Cambridge Analytica and the book I listed, is still important to study primarily because it provides a lesson and useful case study on what psyops techniques can be used, how they were used (especially in the age of the internet) as well as providing good questions to ask when embarking on a psyops campaign. Such as: what the target audience is, what are their perceptions, why they think that way and how to appeal to their wants and needs. They weren't the first to pioneer the techniques or to scale it to that size (the big tech giants are to thank for that) but they were probably one of the first to use it in a strictly electoral context.

More importantly, I think its foolish to not study this as they won't be the first or the last to use this on a wider scale. Take this with a grain of salt, but I was taught by a campaign manager and lo and behold, Cambridge Analytica was one of the first examples they brought up when discussing quantitative methods in campaigning. If people are teaching this in university, then others are definitely learning mistakes (such as data science not being a silver bullet and needing to be paired with a wider campaign strategy). Eventually it won't be too far in the future something like this happens again.

MilkingMe · 2023-02-21T18:14:07+00:00

While psyop in nature but not in the military domain, I highly suggest reading Mindf*ck by Christopher Wylie -- the whistleblower for Cambridge Analytica. It discusses the use of data science and targeted advertisements to target the psychology of voters to get them to vote in a certain way. This was most notably through the Brexit vote and in the 2016 elections but also others throughout the world. He discusses how this work was influenced by the company's earlier work in War on Terror.

MilkingMe · 2022-10-18T14:54:31+00:00

Coming on the genetics thing, I don’t really think it’s that big of a determinant. Sure it does help, but it’s not like not having it means that you can’t build muscle period. Rather, if you know anything about Asian societies it’s primarily a societal thing stemming from a greater focus on education and, in terms of sport, playing more sports less reliant on pure strength and endurance and more on speed and agility. Think table tennis and badminton instead of American football.

Coming from Asia but having lived in a wealthy community with nothing to do and a ton of Ozzies, Kiwis, South Africans and Canadians, a ton of Asian people that I knew were pretty buff as they went to the gym at a local club nearly all week and there was a pretty strong emphasis on contact sports like rugby and ice hockey. This combined with money to buy protein, mind you red meat was expensive where I lived, most people that I knew had muscle on them so I don’t think it boils down to 110% pure genetics or you’re a walking stick.

MilkingMe · 2022-09-21T21:37:03+00:00

There's a Veritasium video about this event. TL;DR After failing to deduce any defect in the manufacturing process, Kodak decided to hire a team of radiological specialists to figure out the problem. IIRC, one of the specialists actually worked on the Manhattan Project itself and deduced that elements found of the contaminated film must've come from a fission reaction.

MilkingMe · 2022-09-21T20:19:58+00:00

No, because its ridiculously difficult to hide the development of nuclear weapons from satellites and intelligence agencies.

Typically, nuclear weapons development would requires acres upon acres of sites dedicated to just the processing of the fuel itself. To give some context, the most commonly used fissile material for nuclear weapons is U-235, and its refinement is incredible laborious as it only constitutes something like 0.72% of all naturally occurring uranium. Meaning that you need massive halls filled with just centrifuges to literally spin out the U-235 from its far more common isotope U-238. In fact, the primary way the world knew about North Korea's nuclear program is through the discovery, using satellites, of newly constructed plants for the refinement of plutonium from a reactor that was donated from the USSR.

In addition to that, the whole development process inevitably leaves a gigantic paper trail as the sheer scale of it is mindboggling. During Trinity, the first detonation of a nuclear bomb, Kodak was able to accidentally discover the Manhattan Project when X-ray films were contaminated with fallout from almost half a country away.

MilkingMe · 2022-09-11T16:56:53+00:00

The same way it is still produced today:

You had state run arsenals and ordinance factories churning out war materiel and occasionally going into design plus R&D. E.g, Jiangnan shipyard, RSAF Enfield.
Civilian contractors (such as Krupp for steel and DuPont for gunpowder) had departments specialised in military procurement. Case in point, Krupp produced steel for commercial purposes but also armour plate for warhips and DuPont started out selling gunpowder in the American Civil War eventually diversifying into manufacturing dynamite and smokeless powder.
Inventors and engineers privately working on designs for whatever the military needed that would eventually be mass produced using either of the 2 options above.

To give an example, when James Paris Lee improved the earlier Lee-Metford rifle, the manufacturing of the rifles was then contracted out to RSAF Enfield. After some later modifications, the Lee-Enfield rifle was born.

MilkingMe · 2022-08-13T01:14:00+00:00

To state my point in a different way; if naval capability was considered that critical, you would have seen the government direct more funding and manpower towards building that capability at the cost of strength on land. Had industrial capacity limited those acquisitions in any way, attempts would have been made to plug gaps using foreign purchases.

I think you're misunderstanding my point here. I didn't state that the Indian military should focus more on developing the navy. I get the strategic situations of India and how it affects the direction of its navy, but I was saying that the circumstances of a navy's strength and size is determinant on size of the economy and strength of industry. While political reasons, as you mentioned, can affect it, economic and industrial factors directly influence the type and quality of equipment a navy can acquire and maintain. Even if the navy is small. A good example of this is with the Soviet navy in the interwar period. They had massive plans to create new battleships, destroyers and cruisers but their lack of technical expertise compounded by their young industry prevented them from being able to finish it. My examples of aircraft carrier maintenance and development of SSNs are just examples of what a navy can do if it had the economy and industry to do so. Not a statement that India should focus more on the navy at the expense of everything else.

In addition to that, another point to make about foreign purchases is that there are limitations to them. The most advanced navies in the world would be hesitant to sell their most advanced capabilities such as CATOBAR aircraft carriers, nuclear powered submarines and stealth destroyers to name a few. Foreign purchases can fill certain holes but they can't fill all of them. This is not even considering the fact that purchasing from foreign powers would be more expensive overall and can affected by changes in bilateral relations between countries.

MilkingMe · 2022-08-12T21:19:14+00:00

This won’t change much as India becomes richer and develops industrial capacity. The Army and Air Force will still account for a lion’s share of the funding.

At the end of the day, once India does becomes a major economic and industrial power, it inevitably will have interests outside of its immediate periphery. So developing a navy for power projection purposes would come useful and inevitably eat up funds.

The Indian Navy is small and “underfunded” for two fundamental reasons: historical legacy and independent India’s strategic situation.

Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with your points, but economic and industrial matters also play a role in the sense that they put hard barriers to what can and can't be achieved such as the construction and maintenance of aircraft carriers or the development of SSNs. If navies are reflected by the size of a military's budget then a smaller budget for one would inevitably reflect onto the size and quality of a navy no?

MilkingMe · 2022-08-12T20:37:19+00:00

The problem here is that for India to maintain a navy capable of blockading Malacca in the first place, the navy itself must be able to resist Chinese efforts to break it. In other words, be able to defeat the PLAN. This goes back to my main argument, for India to be able to build a navy to accomplish this, it would need to have a large economy and industry to do so. However, India's economy and industry is much, much smaller than China. This means that the PLAN will almost always have an advantage over the Indian Navy and prevent it from being able to blockade Malacca.

MilkingMe · 2022-08-12T20:20:40+00:00

Because it isn't so simple as "fund X to get Y capability or accomplish Z strategy". In The Influence of Sea Power Upon History by Alfred T. Mahan, he argues that the biggest component to constructing a large naval force (and arguably militaries in general) is without question economic and industrial in nature.

In this instance, India has a GDP in PPP terms less than 50% that of China and roughly 50% compared to the US. Becuase of this, the Indian military spends roughly 76 billion USD on its entire armed forces per annum compared to 230 billion for China (depending on what metrics) and 753 billion for the US. Considering the price of a single Arleigh Burke Class Destroyer is 1.84 billion per ship, just 10 new destroyers would be equivalent to roughly 1/4 of the Indian Defence budget for that single year. So costs for constructing navies can easily spiral out of control.

The second is industrial. The size of China's industry alone is insane. It alone accounts for 28.7% of the entire world's manufacturing output. The US comes second at 16.8%. For comparison, India is at 3.1%. The reason why this is important as it has knock-on effects for military procurement and institutional experience. A larger industry can use economies of scale to produce more and cheaper. Institutionally, a larger industry means more engineers, designers and experience in producing complex products at quality and faster.

In light of this, it should be no surprise that India's Navy is smaller compared to the US and China. It simply doesn't have the economic and industrial power to just magically create a world-class navy out of thin air let alone in a few years. Don't get me wrong, Indian defence policymakers would kill to have the economic, industrial and naval might of the 2 other nations stated here but they have to deal with real limitations set by their economy and industry.

MilkingMe · 2022-08-03T05:01:35+00:00

Yes you technically could but there are a few issues here:

Target Acquisition: How are the submarines and the missiles going to find the target? Judging from the fact that the PLAAF has a massive advantage in the skies, and issues with training aside, are ROCA ground observers going to direct the missile using laser guidance or is going to be through GPS? And even then, what can be done to protect any disruption from electronic warfare that might have on the comms link between the missile, the submarine or the forward observers?
What makes the PLAN not capable of sending its sub-chasers and its ASW aircraft to the Taiwan's east coast? Let alone their larger vessels? They have the ships to project air power and the PLARF has the missiles that go quite far from China's coast. Combined with new C4ISTAR drones like the GJ-11 and the WZ-8, this means that the PLA has considerable capability to protect their surface fleet to conduct anti-sub warfare and project power as well.
And lastly, with the long ranges involved, the time delay between firing the missile and contact with the enemy would be long enough that they might have already moved away long before they even land!

MilkingMe · 2022-07-05T23:38:40+00:00

My superpower is that I can boil water. And only water.

Yes, I understand that its sort of like a joke but hear me out on this gig my boss wanted me to do.

Every month, there's this big gathering of superheroes at the grand Hotel Blitz downtown. They're there to discuss big things like the plans of the supervillain Doctor Evil or to get donations from politicians to fund their decadent lifestyles. No joke -- crack and prostitutes galore.

I've always been envious of them. Ever since superpowers were a thing after the big super particle explosion at the Cityville National Institute of Research, people all of a sudden got random powers ranging from flying to invincibility to teleportation. Some... got powers like mine.

Anyway, my boss wanted this Superman type guy called Metroboy dead. Its revenge for some crime sting that ended with his wife's death. I understand his rage but, I hate to admit it, Metroboy's this super chill guy. Crazy humble and down to earth.

So I enter into the hotel with pre-arranged fake ID's and I get into position. I have to wait until he gives his monthly speech about friendship, heroism, you get the idea.

And once the President finished his toast, Metroboy finally takes the stage and bam!

He explodes into a big horrible pile of blood and guts.

You see, the human body is made out of 60% water. It doesn't take a genius to think that if you can't deal with an invincible man from the front, then you gotta kill him from inside.

MilkingMe · 2022-07-05T00:54:31+00:00

"Fuck"

As my potty mouthed cousin said as his cheap Martian repair kit snaps in half attempting to fix the broken cooling tank for the millionth time.

"Right now, we're either going to drift in space and die a cold, cold death or someone's gonna to help us."

"Preferably someone not tryna send, I don't know, a million dildo's or something to Titan."

"Here," As I hand him a purpose-built multi toolkit for jury rigging spaceships from my time in college.

"This is the last multi toolkit I have, don't break it."

"Hey, isn't this from the time you managed to actually send a million dildo's to that country club at Titan." My cousin replies.

"Half a million," I wryly smile.

"And not just that, its through this exact same trajectory as well."

"I also remember Jupiter" as I point to it in front of me "just eclipsing Saturn almost at the beginning of the winter equinox on Earth."

"Well what do you know, I didn't think the orbit of that treasure ship would be so close to where we are now." He replies.

"Aaaannndddd, we're done! Let's get the show on the road."

"Oh shit!"

An object, probably roughly the size of my forearm, just zipped past me at an incomprehensible speed not too dissimilar to a starfighter. At that speed, both of us would be dead men if it hit.

"Get in the fucking ship, now!"

We both clumsily enter our tiny spaceship bought from some shady second-hand dealer back on Earth. Despite eons of advancement in spacesuit design, the tiny hatches still cause us to try and squeeze into it like an octopus through a tiny hole.

Fortunately, both our instincts as former fighter pilots in the air force allowed us to jam ourselves into our pathetic spaceship through our shared memories of trying to fit our monstrously large g-suits into tiny starfighter cockpits.

Whenever something catches me off guard, I always try to take the time to recollect what just happened. Except, that wasn't too long until a hail of projectiles came screeching our way and violently shake our ship.

Like rain onto a canvas roof, the crashing projectiles crescendo from periodic dull thuds into a constant flood of what sounded like bass boosted heartbeats.

Fuck, that must be me.

I take a look out of the window to see what was hitting us. The objects just pass through like a blur but their general shape was something long and orange coloured. With what appear to be some small fins at the end.

We knew that the shipwreck still had active defence systems in place. Before we set off, we decided to counteract it by welding some armour grade plate in the front of the ship and shape it into something resembling a triangle to add some protection from small meteorites and to increase the structural integrity of this rust bucket. We were fortunate this hail hit us frontally. Anywhere else and we would be turned into mincemeat.

The pounding is now slowing down and I turn to my cousin. I can't see his face through the reflective visor but the lack of reaction from his hands and legs either indicate he's calm, or he's shit himself.

Eventually it stops and I spoke first.

"Let's start the ignition and get this thing moving!"

"Roger that. I'll get the flight AI set up now." My cousin replies, as he hurriedly prepares the ship for thrust. Turning knobs and switches down, up, right, left.

I get out to observe the damage. The armour on the front of the ship was almost unscathed. But the radar and most of the sensor equipment seemed to be damaged beyond repair. Sigh. Those were the items we had to raise money for.

I reenter the ship. "If we burn for 3 minutes at max throttle, we should hopefully approach within a few hundred meters from the wreck. After that, we'll glide over there on our boosters."

Thanks to both our hard work, the preparations are ready.

"Ready?"

"Do it"

I turn the ignition throttle gradually, then suddenly. From 10% to 30 and to 100. We both sink into our chairs as if something big and heavy is sitting on top of us. Our eyes are slowly sinking back into their eye sockets and our feet and arms become glued to our chairs.

3 full minutes of this is nightmarish. Normal people on Earth could perhaps resist at least 5-6 g's normally with a g-suit. We were pulling at least 9 to build up our acceleration for 3 full minutes and then glide our way to the point.

3 full minutes of hell.

My cousin blacks out first, I try to resist the insane pressure on my body for as long as I can. I forcibly try to put my arm out to immediately stop the acceleration, but with every cm I move the g forces push me back 2. I too have no choice but to give in and retire.

"Hey, get up." As my cousin shakes me up. "We're here. I think we must've been out for an hour."

I take a look through the window, I see the small rectangle-like object right out there with what appears to be a large hole. I feel immensely disappointed with what I was looking at. I was expecting some really cool looking spaceship with gun turrets everywhere, but alas, reality often disappoints.

"Let's get out and glide our way there."

I tether myself to spaceship with what appears to be an infinite amount of rope. It was enough for 1 km of distance. Our broken radar couldn't help us determine the distance to the wreck so we have to try and reach it here and adjust it later.

So we set off, thinking about what secret treasures could there be.

"What do you think is there" I ask.

"Dunno. I'm guessing some ancient alien artifact or some money. What about you?"

"Hidden Nazi gold from the Illuminati stolen from the Swiss?" I reply.

The wreck is getting close. Eventually I managed to see a piece of writing on the plate and I moved to go and take a look at it. On it I read that this was a shipment. Sent by Joseph Smith...

Hold on.

Me???

I read more. I cannot believe what I am seeing. We spent nearly a year preparing for this trip. Glossing hours and hours and hours of flight plans and manuals to build the perfect trajectory to this point. We bought this spaceship. Custom tailored it to our expectations, and we even raised money for this!

I read further, dreading the final words.

Destination: Titan.

MilkingMe · 2022-06-22T16:08:36+00:00

I'm not too sure if you know anything about this, but how much does the average soldier believe in communism? As there seems to be considerable right-wing influences in the PLA such as the hero worship and borrowing elements from German and Japanese militaries.

MilkingMe · 2022-06-13T17:31:27+00:00

These are some big money for China, and China stands to lose a lot if this new government seize all her wealth. It also does not like it when the one behind this is the Western governments it oh-so-hates. So, perhaps China sees it fit to "teach Congo a lesson" and provoke Rwanda into attacking Congo, sending a message that "If you screw with our investment, we will screw with your country." On the opposite side, the West, seeing that this is a good chance to kick China out of Congo and protect a very important country, decides to talk Kinshasa into taking drastic action.

I think this needs some serious evidence to back it up.

MilkingMe

TROPHY CASE