A prominent figure in Hama, where he was born in 1914. He loved art and literature as a child and was distinguished by his elaborate artwork. He met the artist George Michelet and accompanied him throughout his stay in Hama, learning a lot about drawing and its rules from him. Michelet also guided the young Sharif, developed his modernist sense, and encouraged his impressionistic experiments. He entered Dar Al-Mu’alliyyin in Damascus in 1929 and graduated in 1932 after obtaining first place there. He was appointed an art teacher at the Hama Preparatory School (Ibn Rushd School). He was sent to Egypt to study photography at the Faculty of Arts in Cairo in 1946, where he studied the fundamentals of photography and drawing at the hands of the best Egyptian teachers whom he often mentioned in his writings and press interviews. He graduated from the Faculty of Arts in 1950 to teach art in a number of high schools in Hama and Damascus, and finally remained a teacher at Dar Al-Mu’alliyyin – Damascus until his retirement in 1974.