Drawing Feels Natural

I miss my grandmother who died a long while ago so I drew this old woman. Her name is Mayina Khatun and she is a Rohingya. Funny! I couldn’t drew her face long but ended up making it a bit round like my grandma’s. The end result looks a bit like my grandma. Maybe, I am missing her! She passed away a long while ago.

I love how drawing things relaxes and focuses me; and, I love how drawing has always felt natural to me. I have not been trained in the classroom in this art except for when I was in high school. I belonged to a Pakistani high school, which was run in a small city named Sheikhupura, so obviously we had to learn without much help. I studied in National Model High School, which was one of the best schools in our city. This school started at grade 5 or 6; and, they focused mostly on Sciences. Thus, I had only a sketch pad, some pencils, a sharpener, an eraser, and some color pencils—I also managed to learn just a little bit of water coloring. My teachers taught me how to draw fruits, vegetables, flowers, and ducks. I even won an award for drawing and coloring ducks. The easiest competition that I had was a genius who knew all the Sciences and Humanities but he could draw only pea-sized photographs. 🙂 Hehehehe! I was around 15 years old when I left my high school and joined a Women’s Only College that was also very strict about Sciences—I feel like crying. We had music and dance events though as well as bazaars, which was helpful.

But, it still worked out fabulously for me. I wonder how my drawings would change after I have trained myself with the help of some real artists!

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