Even teachers of art go through a standard training scheme: art school, college, university. But I didn’t really want to talk about this, but about how this learning process is built. 

   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.