It now feels totally natural, but the road to it was totally obscure for me until I just started taking tons of pictures. Interestingly, I now usually focus on composition / shape / focal points "consciously", planning it out, doing designs, while the more "technical" side of painting (mixing colors, brushstrokes, dark/light) is totally muscle memory.
I have made a lot of music, until it felt "part of myself", then tried out painting/drawing, which is now an integral part of my life and way of seeing the world. But my primary background and ultimately my "self-identity" is software. It is funny how art is pretty much the opposite in terms of process: I will consciously and "technically" work on the part that will affect the viewer/listener the most (composition, buildups/breakdowns in music, tension/relaxation, color/shape/form), and once a good "solution" is found the technical part of it kind of solves itself.
In software, I prefer working on system level things, threading designs, database / scaling, embedded systems. The architectural part of the system is very intuitive, I usually have an idea pop up in my head or while showering. They are often wrong, but I take care of that by doing a lot of miniature systems in their own branches and discard them when not good. However, the technical side of implementing that idea of a design is extremely demanding, and needs iterations and thinking and just plain focused work.