What stemmed from pencil tracings and creative monochromatic sketching was finally able to truly blossom as I first laid my hands on a paintbrush with a dip of color. How messy those first brushstrokes were, how novel, unconfident, and wobbly. Layers upon layers of amateur and diluted paint marks filled a beginner-level cardboard canvas until they made an overly saturated image of two vibrant neon coral flamingoes. To the untrained eye, to my untrained eyes, the painting was nothing short of treasure because what mattered was that I had done it.
My encouraging elders who smiled upon my innocent joy would ask, Did you do that? At the time, I’d proudly answer cheekily, Yes!
My baby steps towards Da Vinci’s realm of expertise pushed me to indulge myself in practice and experimentation, which was also really only possible due to my mother’s support in my picking up anything other than couch potatoing. Through weekly tutoring sessions, I took note of where I was lacking and was able to hyperfocus on how to scale a printed photo onto a canvas through ratios and object relationships, sketch in defined shapes as quickly as possible, and attempt at color matching. In my final moments of painting, my mentor would come over and apply finishing touches, such as highlights or shadows, to “enhance” my work until I had improved enough that she no longer needed to. I knew my place in technique and proficiency wasn’t top tier, and my sometimes “collaborated” pieces could only ever be labeled as studies, but I persevered to overcome these dependencies.
Did you do that? I was asked again. Yes, I smiled meekly, with a little guilt and a wish for a standalone skill. At least 90% of that was me.
My improvement did spike as I invested time and energy into the fluency of artistic building blocks, but as weeks went on, there was no significant increase in ease in working or improvement that was evident to the naked eye. Though I didn’t know it then, the reliance I had on those photos of reference had rewired my brain into this very narrow and flat way of painting. I sensed this plateau, but I kept painting for the fun of it.
Perhaps then, it was a blessing of fate that I had a change in environment. Going abroad and switching schools jumbled my social skills, so I chose to continue my pursuit of art, where I felt the most comfortable. I enrolled in Studio Art at my new school, expecting more of the same, but instead of rigid technique and endless references, I was forcibly handed something unfamiliar: freedom. Every piece had to be original, intentional, and done with minimal muscle memory-trained referencing. Oh, the horror. As I dramatically cried in agony and doomscrolled Instagram reels to fade out of existence, unbeknownst to me, I came across quality art videos (thank you algorithm) and learned passively through my favorites’ technique. Through trial and error, I messed with mediums from acrylics to watercolor, from inks to gouache. I slowly but surely taught myself elements of art that were absent in my prior education, like value—the weight in color, perspective, movement, and played with techniques like layering, underpainting, and glazing— the adding of light, transparent layers of color.
Finally liberated from the shackles of where to start and having a proper core to fall back on, I chased the aesthetics of what spoke to me. I started painting busier scenes, picking and choosing between a soft realist look or an invigorating impressionist one. And slowly, I fell deeper in love. A love so deep, I could start with a blank canvas and transition into a flow state without regard to the hours that pass. My feet would ache, my stomach would growl, but my eyes would be locked and my brush diligently making bold, pigmented marks. The room would get quiet until my paints on my palette run out, and—oh. I take a few steps back and look breathlessly at what is full of depth, dimension, harmony, and most importantly, is mine.
A passerby would ask once more, Did you do that? I would say, No, I was possessed.