Drawing was the first major hobby of mine. As a five year old, I began drawing reasonably well and that matured into more serious attempts at re-creating beautiful images and pictures that I saw in books.

I learnt to use water colors and poster colors on my own. It then graduated to an odd form of painting, which took several hours to complete, but one where I used a pencil thin brush to draw black borders to my pictures. This made the overall painting standout, but it was a very amateurish attempt at art that looked cartoonish at times. Unable to get any formal training from good teachers both in school and outside, I lost interest in this hobby too and took to studying Math and Science seriously. After all, fear of joblessness was inculcated as early as age seven in Indian middle class families. And, there were of course no jobs if you didn't read Math and Science, two subjects that I generally didn't find interesting until I turned 30.

In 2017, my wife encouraged me to join the kids for a formal art class during the weekends. Thanks to our teacher, I am now reviving my hobby and attempting to re-skill myself and do something that I always loved to do. I am on track to learn all the tricks of the trade, including that elusive 3-D drawing and large canvas painting that I always dreamed about but could never do in the past.

I will chronicle my learning journey with images of artwork that I created. Below is the first major achievement of mine that was appreciated by many. It took eight classes to get here...Game on!!!