One day, I happened to hear a conversation between my brother and a friend, very peculiar, between us:

- Which do you like more cats?

- I'm smoky-blue

- Well, Yes, they're beautiful. And for some reason I like simple, gray, are striped, yard.

- Yeah, they can be a little green.

- Right, yeah, that's what I like.

   In general, studying art history has always been a matter of principle for me. From the earliest childhood we, together with my father, considered books on art, and especially my favorite albums were “Petrov-Vodkin's drawings” and “what color rainbow” by E. Kameneva (dictionary of artistic terms for children). Especially the latter attracted attention and strengthened the perception of great masterpieces, because for a very young age, it was ideal: colorful, unusual, interesting, demonstrated objects and objects of art and culture of different countries and peoples.

One day, in painting, during my studies, being in the first year, I painted another still life from nature with oil paints. Of course, by that time, we - the students have already studied the course of painting technology, learned the table of mixing paints and their light resistance, learned to prepare themselves “tee” (a composition of three components: varnish, thinner, oil for correct dilution of oil paints to a liquid state) and strictly, consistently dried paint layers before starting another painting session. But, mistakes happen at all. In order to save the diluent (for some reason, pinene was less than required), I added to the “tee” more varnish and even more oil. We, students, used, basically, the settled and bleached sunflower oil, instead of linen which at the end of the nineties - the beginning of two thousandth years still was difficult to get in the small provincial town in the North of Sverdlovsk region (Russia).

   Often this question is asked by our "recruits" and just fans of creativity in social networks and in person. The question is certainly important and interesting, but not easy. As in any other activity, the fine arts have their own rules, laws, traditions and wishes. You don't ask, for example, a bricklayer, how to build houses or a Baker, how to bake bread, right? Because in their activity there are many nuances. The artist has no less of them.

   There are those days when there is absolutely no mood for drawing. Everybody has them, and big, serious artists, too: either their head suddenly ached, then there is no mood, or some urgent matters prevent them from concentrating. At such moments, the symbols of creative being help very much: reproductions of favorite paintings, cute soulful souvenirs, visiting exhibitions, an example of a familiar master-teacher.

   There are important people in life, necessary ones, and necessary ones, these are our teachers. I always say that I am lucky in life: I had wonderful, real, amazing teachers to whom I would be grateful for many, many years to come. My first teacher, Claudia Vladimirovna Lamparter, is incredibly sincere and able to experience the pain and joy of others, like her own, always ready to support, it was she who set the vector of my life path, taught me to set a high bar and take it. Nina Vasilievna Teterina - a teacher of literature - taught me to speak to an audience and express my thoughts coherently in writing. Irina Petrovna Dudina - a history teacher - thanks to her, classes were easy and interesting, even if the material was very serious, everything was remembered for a long time, because the events studied during the lesson were comprehended, analyzed, viewed from different sides. By the way, it was Irina Petrovna who taught me to make a convenient and quick summary of lectures, which was useful during my further studies. Anatoly Vasilyevich Solovyov - your sculpture lessons helped a lot in academic drawing classes, and your humor and positive attitude to everything that happens is simply necessary during working days. Valery Petrovich Belonozhko - Your advice and huge reading lists still discipline me, now I compose it for myself, what a pity that I managed to do so little in literary unification ....
   I have a lot of such "magic" people, but especially I would like to single out the three most-most.

   Larisa Petrovna Lebedeva - our teacher of methods of fine arts and dean of the faculty-for me you are not just a model of competence and erudition, but also the standard of the head of the creative educational team.

Dad always said: “Think with a pencil!”. This meant that it was necessary to draw more than to carefully consider how to do it better. I often observe a similar picture occurring with my students in class: a man painted a staging, built, measured proportions, and suddenly froze with a pencil in his hand, as if he was dumbfounded. “Is something incomprehensible?”, - I ask, and in response: “I think“. And this thinking can take a long time, unfortunately. You can think a lot, analyze, represent different solutions to a color problem or a logical rebus in a drawing, you can even immediately draw a picture in your imagination or even plan an entire exhibition. As a rule, such meditations remain “virtual” images, they are not embodied in a piece of paper or canvas, but remain dumb reproach to the insolvency of the beginning artist.

   I love a simple pencil.  From my very first drawings it was a favorite tool. Still I like the way he rustles the paper, like its clear, dark, a little silver trail and the smell of wood. In soviet childhood, I had pencils of the brand "Cedar". What they were “fragrant"! Even the cardboard box in which they were stored was impregnated with this magic smell of resin and fresh cut wood.

Why do you need to draw simple geometric shapes: cube, ball, cylinder, cone, hexagon? As in any activity, it all starts with the simplest, as any progressive development consists of the gradual development of the material from the simple to the complex.