The first painting I ever made was a watercolor of nothing in particular: streaks of blue and yellow bleeding into each other one Saturday morning while my mom painted beside me. I was five. I didn't know what I was doing, but I knew I didn't want to stop.

By the time I was old enough to pick my own supplies, I'd worked my way through nearly everything the art store had to offer. Colored pencils worn down to stubs. A block of clay that dried out before I finished my sculpture. Charcoal that left my hands black for the rest of the day. Still, I kept coming back.

Then, two years ago, I picked up an oil brush for the first time, and something clicked. The colors didn't just sit on the canvas; they glowed. And when I made a mistake, I could blend it away, rethink it, reshape it. Oil paint waits for you; it lets you change your mind. For someone like me, that patience feels like a gift.

But no matter the medium, I always returned to the same subject: faces. Even as a kid, I was obsessed with eyes, specifically the tiny white fleck of light that makes a drawn eye look alive. I'd spend an hour on that single highlight, moving it a millimeter to the left, then back again.

Portraits hold my attention because no two faces tell the same story. Every person who sits in front of my canvas brings something I've never painted before: a particular way light falls across a cheekbone, an expression that's hard to name. I'm always chasing that. I'm Mashal, I'm 16, and I don't think I'll ever run out of faces to explore.