Learning to paint with oils is a whole new world for me. (Not that I know how to paint with anything else; I don’t.) I now have a new set of supplies to get me started: canvas pads, brushes, paints, cleaning solutions. As far as I can tell, there is only one way for me to learn things: the hard way.
Example: I get to class, open my instruction booklet and pick up where I left off at the end of the previous class. I remove one sheet from the canvas pad and clip it to the support board, load up my paint and off I go with the current lesson.
Or not. First thing the instructor says when she stops by my station (after I’d been painting a while) is, “That’s the wrong side.”
The wrong side
“The wrong side of what?” I ask.
“The wrong side of the canvas.” She flips it over to show me the difference.
“Oh.” (The art world is safe from me, I can tell right now.)
I clip the same canvas to the support board and start over.
Wow! What a difference using the right side makes!! (That looked and sounded funnier in class.)
The Right Side
It's a long story ... 
This punched my “teacher button.” I got a smile out imagining your in-class experience of starting on the wrong side. On the intellectual side, however, I am wondering why the teacher started you with producing symbols when you are working with color primarily. This is something for us to talk about when life puts us together again over food. Also, as a teacher, I actually would have let you experience painting on the wrong side long enough that when you shifted to the right your other-than-cognitive mind would “feel” and “perceive” the difference.
The symbols were an exercise in how to hold the brush. When I painted on the right side, I went on to the next exercise, which used only one color. I won’t be using a lot of color until I finish the introductory lessons and get used to the oil paints. The good thing is I’m having fun. I could say that’s regardless of my mistakes, but I’m thinking my mistakes are a big part of the fun.