My Art Journey

It was circa 1991, a warm wintery afternoon in our humble defence quarters. I didn’t know what I was doing, really. I was just a child with a piece of chalk in my hand, left to my own little world while my mother busied herself with cooking in one corner of our verandah. The familiar aroma of her cooking mingled with the soft winter breeze, and the gentle chirping of sparrows filled the air around us, a sound so simple, yet so comforting.

I bent down and began to draw. Circles, lines, squiggles, something that resembled a bird, or at least, I thought so. A crude little figure, but it meant something to me. My mother came out to check on me and froze for a moment. She stared at the pattern on the floor, eyes wide — not out of confusion, but recognition. “What’s this?” she asked softly. I just smiled.

To my surprise, she didn’t wipe it off. She left that patch of the verandah untouched for two whole days. That chalk drawing faded away gently on its own, but something had shifted in me. That was where it all began.

The verandah gave way to a slate — my new playground for scribbling, doodling patterns, and creating shapes from my imagination. Over the years, my enthusiasm grew. I drew Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Dennis the Menace — and cars, oh so many cars. Meanwhile, a quiet fascination for aircraft was already brewing in the background. My father would occasionally bring home magazines from his library, just for a day or two. For me, those magazines were gold mines. Colourful pictures of aircrafts and helicopters filled their pages, and I’d recreate them — as best as I could — on those old dot matrix printer papers we had lying around at home. That joy — that rush of seeing my own version — was unmatched.

We only had a small black and white television at home, and yet those animated characters, those moving images, stirred my imagination like nothing else. My school drawing sir once made me the class in-charge of collecting drawing books after homework — perhaps he saw the spark before I did. Resources were limited back then. Sketch pens, pencil colours, and crayons were my tools, and paper was my favourite surface. I didn't receive any formal training, but I practised… a lot.

Eventually, I graduated to watercolours, and then acrylics on canvas. Each medium opened a new door. I painted people, experimented with abstract forms, and allowed myself the freedom to explore without fear. No, I don’t call myself a perfectionist — art doesn’t demand perfection, only honesty and persistence.

Even today, I find myself returning to those early days — the sparrows, the stove in the corner, the fading chalk bird — and I smile. Because sometimes, a journey that starts with a chalk drawing on a verandah can end up colouring your entire life.