Hello! My name is Elena Tatkina. I’m an artist, a teacher, an art-director, and a production designer. As a Motion Graphics producer. I took part in such famous movies as “The Turkish Gambit”, “The Brest Fortress”, “Mongol” etc. At Veronika Kalacheva’s Art school I teach the course of pastel drawing. 

There is very little information about pastel. People often buy it just because it looks attractive without any idea of how to work with it, so it just sits there. I used to think that teaching younger people is easier. However, now I understand that the best learners are those who really want to learn, who are

interested, motivated, enthusiastic and eager to enter the world of pastel.

I know that men are also interested in pastel, but most of my clients are certainly women. Those who lack creativity, emotions, psychological safety valve, interest for life in their everyday lives. Very often my students are quite far from the art sphere. When they draw, they forget about everything, plunging deeply into their work, not thinking of anything, relaxing, meditating. 

An Artist

At first I was dreaming to achieve hyperrealism in pastel. So I was drawing extremely thoroughly, never left a single unfinished spot. However, when I understood that now I could draw realistically whatever I wanted, I got bored. That was when I decided that I wanted to show emotions, mood, images. This brought me to sketching technique – expressive, rough, with unfinished edges and patches. And, as I have noticed, others prefer this kind of works too.

We’ll start with the simplest patterns, eventually advancing to some challenging sketching tasks:

• We’ll learn how to make easy sketches
• We’ll do some hand setting exercises
• We’ll unleash and get ready to create some real pictures
• We’ll study some classical pieces with trichromatic palettes.
• We’ll approach step by step some expressive sketches, like Degas’

In the end of the course you will have several works which can become a good interior decoration or a great present for friends. The course will prove useful both for beginners and professional artists. Very few people know that pastel combines very well with watercolor. A mixed-technique watercolor looks much more bright and eye-catching.