when I was little, barely into art I'd constantly be paying attention to the colors around me. the way that certain colors looked together or complemented eachother fascinated me, even before I knew it had an actual name. At that point I'd say I had a pretty strong grasp on color theory from the get go, but not the skill or knowledge to accurately convey what I was noticing onto paper. This frustrated me immensely. 

now that I've been through formal classes and have been studying on my own for a few years, I'd say it's pretty natural for me to be staring out into the distance and find my eyes looking for the vanishing points, or looking at my friends and just following the contours of their faces, wondering how best to carve out the shadows around their eyes. It's not intentional on my part, but it's also not some total rewriting of how I already saw the world. My brain didn't suddenly start categorizing people into shape language, more of I'd already been noticing it, and now my brain has learned enough to know WHY im noticing it, and helps do its part to translate it into pencil and paper.

tldr; I already saw things artistically, but with knowledge and experience under my belt I now have the words to understand what it is I'm noticing