The Time I Learnt to Paint
Sculpt Your Way to the Finish
When I was 14, I made my first painting. At that point, I was fully committed to becoming an architect and had dropped all my art classes. In the Nigerian education system, students must choose between arts, science, and commercial classes in the later years of secondary school—neat little categories that dictate our academic paths. I was on the science track because it was necessary for my architecture degree (though, in my opinion, architecture belongs to the arts). Despite my focus on architecture, my art teacher insisted I keep coming to the studio after class. Somehow, he persuaded me to try painting on canvas with acrylics—something I had never done before. From the moment I started, I knew I loved it.
I don’t have a photo of that first painting, but I remember it clearly. I painted what I imagined a village scene to be. There was a hut on the right side of the canvas, painted brown with a thatched roof. I tried to give the roof texture by slathering the paint on thickly. (If I’m being honest, the whole painting had ‘texture,’ but that was more because I hadn’t learned that acrylic paint dries lightning-fast, and you need to wet it periodically to keep working with it.) The hut sat against a light blue sky, with lemon-green grass in the background, and a tall tree standing almost in the center. And, oh yes, there was a chicken in the foreground—I wasn’t yet confident enough to paint a person, so I added the chicken for some life without risking my masterpiece.
At that time, I knew nothing about painting, but I wasn’t afraid to try. I made peace with the fact that, despite all I didn’t know, it would still turn out well.
A lot of time passed before I attempted my second painting; this time, my mindset was very different. By then, I was 18, in my second year of architecture school, struggling to fit painting practice into my busy schedule. YouTube had become a go-to resource, and I was more aware of my limitations, convinced I could YouTube-university my way into becoming a better painter. But even though I hadn’t been practicing consistently, I expected more from myself. I found a few tutorials by Will Kemp and followed them to a T. I was proud of how closely my attempts matched the originals, thinking I had made real progress. But in reality, all I did was mindlessly follow instructions. I’d stop and rewind every time I missed a step, feeling frustrated when I couldn’t keep up.
Feeling somewhat confident in my abilities, I decided to try painting something without a reference—and found it incredibly difficult.
Finally, in 2020, with the world at a standstill, I decided it was time to seek out someone who truly knew how to paint: *Mr. Moses Emanuel. Thanks to my dear friend *Matthew, who put in a good word for me, I was fortunate that he agreed to take me on. With nowhere else to be and nothing better to do, I was painting every day for a little over a month.
Learning from him was a different experience altogether. My paintings rarely looked good at the start because I struggled to get the proportions right. But he taught me to "sculpt" the painting gradually until it looked the way I wanted. He once told me something that stuck with me:
“It’s not that experienced painters don’t encounter problems; they do. They’re just more confident they’ll be able to work through them—it’s like problem-solving.”
He taught me two crucial things that boosted my confidence.
First, I only painted with primary colors—blue, yellow, and red (plus white)—and had to mix everything else. This forced me to think about color combinations and how to get the shades and tones I wanted.
Second, he taught me how to be critical of my work, to assess it honestly, and to iterate as I went along.
Looking back, I realize that my journey with painting has always been one of learning confidence. Confidence, and perhaps a certain freedom of expression, often come from not knowing exactly how something should be—and being okay with that. However, when you do know better, it’s about allowing yourself to course-correct until you achieve a desired outcome.