DEMONSTRATION BY ELENA BAZANOVA. Harmony of colour and water.

Autumn is a real palette of shades, where warm and cold colours are combined. Warm colours such as Aureolin, Golden and Titian Red fill the autumn landscape with warmth and brightness. The shining gold of the foliage is provided by mixtures of these colours. They create an atmosphere of solemnity and coziness.

I chose a place on the embankment of the Gulf of Finland on the outskirts of the city. A view with a wide horizon and a high sky filled with clouds. The rays of the setting sun flood everything with a soft warm light. The light of the setting sun is reflected from the upper light clouds and breaks through the heavier low clouds...

The city landscape is one of my favourite genres in painting. I especially like the embankments of the old city, filled with a special meaning and preserving the memory of many historical events. Smooth bends of rivers and channels make it possible to find an interesting compositional solution.

The lightness, smooth flow from colour to colour and transparency of watercolour is consonant with the soft touches of colour in the buds and petals of flowers.

Now we will make a small watercolour sketch of pansies. For work, I chose 5 colours, three of them shades of blue and violet, one green and yellow.

Today we have a very interesting task - working at plein air in the forest, using a palette of six colours of watercolour paints White Nights. I will pick a palette of six colours in tubes, I will tell you why I picked these colours and draw a forest landscape with these colours.

Eugene's watercolour is distinguished by unique soft colour and tonal transitions: the colours are as if pulled up by a slight haze. Fast sketches often use a substrate in the form of a preliminary drawing with a graphite pencil. Pencil lines that shine through a light colourful layer become a harmonious part of the study and serve as tonal contrasts.

I have long wanted to talk about the colours of the blue spectrum. To maximise the sound of blue, I will complement the cold palette of blue with muted warm yellow-orange-reddish shades that will contrast with the blue shades.

Our task today is to choose a harmonious colour solution for the orange-blue palette of still life. The combination of orange and blue is built on the contrast of warm orange and cold blue shades.

Our task today is to select and reveal the optimal rich red palette of colours as part of a still life with watermelon and grey drapery. You need to find and reflect the voiced warm scarlet colour of the watermelon flesh, deep and dense, with a cold hue, dark ruby colour of the background and light colour of flowing graphite-grey drapery.

The composition of the bouquet consists of roses and gypsophila. I draw a bouquet in one session, using the alla prima technique, so there will be a lot of colour improvisations and conditional (or abstract) generalizing solutions. Before starting work, I moisten the sheet well on both sides because the paint must move freely along the sheet.

For the green still life, I chose broccoli, lettuce leaves, green sweet pepper, avocado (cut in half), cucumber, half lime, 3 orange cherry tomatoes and a sprig of bay leaf.

To the pink-purple palette of the still life, the contrasting colours are yellow and green. In our object placing, these are green vegetable tails, a sprig of mint and a complex grey with cold yellow undertone in a light background, white drapery and on a cut of vegetables.

At first, I watch the animal for a long time, record in the visual memory the features of its behavior, play and communicate with it in order to feel character, make sketches from nature.

Pomegranate has a clear understandable shape and complex colour, and divided into several parts, fascinates with translucent luminous grains. The pomegranate propounding allows you to catch and convey all the shades of the red palette: from rich and deep burgundy brown, to sparkling pink-scarlet shades with overflows.

What should an artist do for showing something on the paper? What tasks to set and solve? How to create an illusion of volume on a sheet and a feeling of a three-dimension world?