The beginning of my art journey

Paints, brushes, canvases and paper are things that make me happy. Playing with colours is my favourite hobby and it lightens my mood at any given point in time. My love for painting was not inborn, it had to be discovered and developed. It all began with my first day at a drawing class.
 I clearly remember sitting in a small room with five other children with new drawing books, colour pencils and pastels. We waited for our teacher with excitement and apprehension. She came in and she told all of us to draw a mango and colour it while she was gossiping with her neighbour. I began working intently on the task assigned to me. The pencil was gripped tightly between my fingers and I drew a misshapen mango. After several tries, I was satisfied with my mango. I began coloring it with my new pencils. I was completely absorbed in making sure that the yellow colour did not cross the grey lines. I was also worried about the pencil tip breaking, they were my new colour pencils and I would have been heartbroken if the tip broke on the very first day. The teacher came in to see what we were doing and she told me that mangoes weren't light yellow in colour. I didn't know what to do so I coloured over the yellow with my orange pencil and made a mess. I was irritated. My mango was so beautiful before she commented on it. The kid next to me coloured his mango blue but she hadn't said anything to him! In the end we all showed her our drawings and she then gave all of us a sticker star. I was proud and happy but not contented because the boy with a blue mango got a star too, even though mine was clearly better. I went home and showed my mother the star and she hugged me.
The next day in class, we had to draw apples. The entire week was spent in drawing mangoes, apples and grapes. I was thoroughly bored by the end of the week. I didn't want to go anymore and my mother didn't pressurize me to continue. Instead she encouraged me to draw something in any way that I liked if I was in a mood for it. She didn't believe that there was any starting or finishing point in the process of learning. I then started drawing things from pictures and books. It wasn't long before I discovered my actual strength, painting.
 For some strange reason, the movements of my hand while holding a brush is flexible and smooth which is not the case when I hold a pencil. The first time I used paint was because the little bottles  looked interesting and I was delighted to dip my brush into it. The result was a mess because I didn't anticipate that a little amount would go a long way and I ended up ruining the paper. Eventually I learnt and acquired the skill of painting through trial and error. Though my mother has learnt painting professionally, she never interrupted my experiments. She let me explore, get comfortable with the tools and discover my own way of doing things. There were many firsts in this process of refining my hobby and all those memories are dear to me. They shaped my passion for a skill that I hold very close to my heart.