Painting
All I really recall of learning to paint is a deep dissatisfaction with the way acrylic smeared onto the canvas-textured paper I'd been given. I didn't understand why some colours were thin and watery, others solid and blocky. (Probably someone explained the meaning of 'opaque' and 'transparent', but to a 7-year-old, it was just that the paints didn't do what I wanted them to.)
When I was about 11 I was given a Pike watercolor palette, and the transparency of watercolours on paper seemed intuitive from the start. I have never looked back. Well, OK, once. I took an oil painting class many years on, thinking maybe I should see what all the fuss was about, and then I never went back.
