Ukrainian hut

The Ukrainian hut had some differences from the Russian hut. It was a dwelling, which was called a hut and had outbuildings for household purposes.

Interior of a Ukrainian hut

Description of a Ukrainian hut of the 19th century

The outside of the huts was coated with clay. IN mid-19th century centuries, Ukrainian huts were whitewashed over clay. Evidence that the Ukrainians coated all outbuildings, both outside and inside, with yellow and red clay, and then whitewashed it, was left by Russian people from the Samara province, where many settlers from Ukraine lived.

Interior of a Ukrainian hut

In Russian houses, clay was not often used to seal the grooves of logs. The same witnesses from near Samara say that the Ukrainians have pipes from the stove diverted to the side, towards the hay wall. Their chimneys smoke comes out right into the hallway. The hole in the pipe is plugged from the outside to retain heat. Once a week, Ukrainians grease the inside of the oven. The houses are covered either with straw on clay, or with straw alone. The houses are close to each other and to the outbuildings inside the estate. Houses are often heated with dung due to a lack of firewood.

Inside the hut

– smoothed earthen floor, small Dutch-type stove. Often the stove was adjacent to the Russian stove. The stove was certainly whitewashed with chalk and painted with a national pattern. In the center of the hut there is a table under a white tablecloth and wooden benches. The front corner is covered with wallpaper and decorated with a shrine. The icons on it are in flowers. The walls are decorated with paintings depicting the sovereign, royal family, national heroes. A mandatory accessory is a mirror decorated with a long embroidered towel and a chest - a hiding place. The ends of a pole rest against the walls, on which clothes hang. The beds are bunks attached to the blank wall of the house.

Traditions of Ukrainians

Ukrainian traditions include keeping towels given by their mother. An embroidered towel is one of characteristic features life of this people. As a rule, a towel is a woven or broken towel used to decorate the “goddess”. Typically, a towel for these purposes is made with ornamental embroidery with double-headed eagles. Basically, towels with their image testify to their ethnic affiliation with the Little Russians, and the main evidence is the ornamental plot in the embroidery. These are rosette, red rose and black burdock.

Review of the works of outstanding masters of Ukrainian decorative painting

Review of the works of outstanding masters of Ukrainian decorative painting

Decorative painting is one of the types of decorative and applied art, which involves plot images and ornaments that are created by means of painting on walls and other parts of architectural structures, as well as on household items. IN Lately decorative painting is also performed on paper, canvas, cardboard and exhibited at art exhibitions as works of easel art.
Decorative paintings are made with oil, tempera, gouache, watercolors and ceramic dyes with further burning in ceramic kilns.
Decorative painting is a traditional art form that has long been widespread in Ukraine. Even today it occupies a prominent place in the work of folk artists.
Back in its heyday Kievan Rus folk craftsmen decorated with decorative painting the interiors and exteriors of buildings, houses, homes of princes and nobility, household items, children's toys, weapons, musical instruments and so on..
For many centuries in different regions In Ukraine, local schools of decorative painting were formed with their own character of performing ornamental motifs, mostly plant ones: flowers, trees, stems, fruits, etc. Many masters paint animals, birds, people, landscapes and complex compositions in their compositions, in which various ornamental motifs are combined with the image of animals and people. Animals, birds, plants, flowers are depicted in a unique way: both real and born from the creative imagination and fantasy of folk artists.

PEOPLE'S ARTIST OF UKRAINE - MARIA PRIMACHENKO.
“I make sunny flowers because I love people, I create for the joy and happiness of people, so that all nations love one and the same, so that they live like flowers all over the earth...”

Maria Primachenko

Among large number famous Ukrainian folk artists, in particular, the talent of the people's artist of Ukraine, laureate of the State Prize named after T. G. Shevchenko, Marie Prymachenko, flared up as a bright star. And Maria Primachenko lived and created in the village of Bolotnya, which is located not far from Kyiv. Her compositions are decorative and original.

Ornamentation is the fundamental principle of folk decorative art, and symmetry in it is the pattern of organization of colored spots and masses. For Maria Primachenko, both composition and color carry a deep meaning. The image of flowers shows the inextricable connection between Maria Primachenko and the people's imagination about goodness and beauty in folklore.
The earth - a garden, a vegetable garden, a field completely covered with wonderful flowers and fruits - these are “Paradise Bushes”: an eternal image of happiness and peace. In its colors it comes from peasant embroideries, carpets, and decorative paintings of “malevki”. Her panel paintings are also similar to them in the principle of strict symmetry and repetition of ornamental forms. The compositional schemes are based on an inextricable synthesis of the decorative and the visual, which is characteristic of both folk art and the painting of MARIA PRIMACHENKO.
Large blue asters in red are perceived as solemn and at the same time ordinary; white flowers outlined in pink paint in a yellow pot on a blue background are sophistication with signs of lyricism; a plot with dark red dahlias in a blue pot on an orange background, like organ music, evokes sound associations of solemnity and festivity. The painting of flowers is fantastically rich; in their depiction, M. Primachenko’s talent radiates the highest truth of art and fantasy.
All her life M. Primachenko painted, in addition to flowers, also animals, fish, and birds. If we put them together, a large, dream-filled, wonderful fairy-tale world would form. Looking around the world of animals created by the artist, you feel its internal integrity, proportionality, and completeness. Primachenko populated the world with domestic animals and forest inhabitants, sky birds, swamp animals, ocean fish; animals, kind and smiling, affectionate and evil, predatory, terrible; animals that live in Polesie, in distant Africa or in the Kiev Zoo; seen in a book and born from the imagination. They exist together in a single, indivisible space of the artist’s creative imagination: laughing and crying, being friends and being at enmity, they form a multifaceted but harmonious integrity in which good and evil, beauty and ugliness, reality and fantasy, the animal world and the human world are balanced.

(Magpies are white-sided) (1967)

"Sunflowers" (1967)

PEOPLE'S ARTIST - EKATERINA BILOKUR.
We see something completely different from the folk artist Ekaterina Bilokur. She painted with oil paints, but her painting is matte, the paints do not shine, the strokes are small, the canvas often appears, the background is clear, the color is blue or cyan.
Ekaterina Bilokur used one stretcher for many paintings, securing the canvas with twine. After finishing the work, the artist removed the picture, and on it Instead I attached another canvas. This technique is similar to the fastening of canvas used by embroiderers. These working techniques indicate a close connection between the working methods of the artist and embroiderers, which have been formed over the centuries. The main thing for Ekaterina Bilokur is bread and flowers. The flowers depicted in the wreath grow from spring to late autumn. In the artist’s paintings, insects, birds, trees, flowers, fruits, vegetables, bread and much more coexist. The entire plant kingdom is living and dynamic. Ear of corn, flowers, fruits, vegetables are not just objects of display, but plant symbols, ways of life. Many compositions are traditionally symmetrical, which is a characteristic feature of ancient folk and applied art. But this symmetry is peculiar - it runs mostly diagonally, its right side does not always repeat the left. Another characteristic feature in the artist’s work is associated with archaism. In the center of many paintings, in the most prominent place, bread, grain, and ears of wheat are depicted. One of her paintings is called “Tsar-Ear of Ears”. E. Bilokur, in addition to oil, also painted in watercolors. True, according to her own definition, this was painting for her less beloved and desirable. As we know from the artist’s statements, she liked to paint people less than flowers, and landscapes done in watercolor are on the periphery of her work. How do leading experts in fine arts, the best in the work of E. Bilokur are flowers and fruits that come to life on the canvas, as they are endowed with a reverent coloring in which all the colors of the rainbow coexist peacefully. As eyewitnesses recall, the artist took each flower and plant, placed them in a glass of water and drew from life. In her paintings there is no perspective depiction of objects, but there is a dynamism that brings her works closer to the ancient art of icon painting. All elements in Bilokur’s paintings are perfectly drawn with the smallest details: the veins of leaves, stems, flower stamens. And although the number of elements - flowers, plants, leaves, vegetables, fruits - is impressive, the composition does not fall apart, but holds together, leaving the impression of a complete, closed world, while not a single detail of the picture is lost, but, on the contrary, wins among its own kind. Ekaterina Bilokur painted with thin brushes, often homemade. Unlike all the professionals who painted from large, general spots of color to small details, the artist did the opposite: from small details to a whole, general, finished work. The artist used a thin brush, like a needle, to paint flower after flower until the whole picture was complete. This technique is similar to Ukrainian embroidery, if detail is given to detail, flower to flower, a completed work is gradually born. Painting by Ekaterina Bilokur is like embroidery with oil paints on canvas. Ukrainian folk embroidery crowns the entire long process from growing flax to canvas fabric and embroidery. In the old days, women sowed flax on their own, looked after it, removed the fiber, made threads, wove canvas, bleached it, and the completion of this process was embroidery. E. Bilokur, by her own admission, spun, weaved, whitewashed and embroidered as well. There is a deep affinity between E. Bilokur’s painting and embroidery. If the artist’s composition grew and went beyond the frame, she did it in a rather unique way: she removed the canvas and added an additional piece to it, without priming, she did this with coarse threads, without masking the seam. Ekaterina Bilokur has several such works.
For E. Bilokur, canvas is a material to which additional pieces of fabric can be sewn in unlimited quantities. her painting crowns and reveals the idea of ​​canvas as embroidery by folk craftsmen, both modern and those who lived and created for many centuries. Thus, in the oil painting of the brilliant artist, there is an internal connection between the objects of display and the means of display, the plane on which everything is created, and the paints. Identifying these connections allows us to trace the flow of creativity in folk traditions, whose roots reach back a long time.

PARASKA KHOMA - ARTIST FROM IVANO-Frankivsk region

In the western regions of Ukraine, folk painting has not become as widespread as in the central and southern Ukraine. But the subject and decorative drawing of Praskovya Khoma, an artist from the Ivano-Frankivsk region, is indicated by a high professional level of artistic skill and the bright creative individuality of the author.
The process of forming P. Khoma’s creative individuality was complex and lengthy. Since childhood, she admired drawing and embroidery. Praskovya Khoma used embroidery to decorate household items and clothing. Her first independent drawings were seen by the world in 1968. These are such creative compositions as “Golden Summer”, “Fields”, “The Sun Rises”, etc.
The artist lives in a village, works in the field, and therefore one of the foundations of her work is daily communication with nature, people and other sources that nourish creative imagination artist, - folk retellings, legends, songs, of which the Hutsul region is so rich. P. Khoma combines her compositions in series, which consist of 10-15 small pictures and reveal a specific intention of the author. When depicting the world around her, the artist does not follow the path of naturalistic copying; she freely and creatively interprets nature, achieving symbolic imagery and great artistic expressiveness. The poetic creativity of the people, the history of their native land, more than once inspired Praskovya Khoma to create original plot works.
This is her “Bondarivna”. The composition of the work is made in the form of a wreath, inside of which there is a depiction of a peasant girl in national clothes Pokuttya XVIII century. The work of Praskovya Khoma should be considered as an interpretation of modernity, expressed by the personification of the depicted flowers, the compositional order of the little ones, and the symbolism of flowers. The synthesis of the real world and optimistic folk symbolism helps the author to reveal the content inherent in the work. An example of this are the compositions “New Year’s Fantasy”, “Firebird”, “Dahlias”, “Fern Blossoms”. The last piece is especially interesting. The joy of being, creative work are felt in the major sound of the red-cherry background color. In most of the small paintings, the craftswoman adheres to the compositional scheme of a flowerpot ("Flowers in a Basket", "Carnations in a Flowerpot", "Daisies") or a tree of life ("Carnations in a Wreath", "Flowers on a Sunny Day"), traditional for Ukrainian folk painting, but there are and compositions subordinated to the theme of movement. Large group leaves recreates the plots of popular songs, fairy tales, and poetic works. This includes such compositions as “Nightingale Song”, “Marigolds”, “Oh Verbichenko”, “Lovage”, “Forest Song”. They, like most works of folk art, are characterized by free symmetry and compositional balance, which is achieved by rhythmic alternation of colors. The artist’s paintings are deeply folk and at the same time vividly individual. P. Khoma paints with watercolors, sometimes using green ink diluted with gouache. First, she makes a pencil sketch of the entire fry, and then completes it in color. The nature of the composition, the size of the flowers, their shape and color are revealed by the author depending on the theme of the work. The craftswoman does this masterfully and quickly, so one gets the impression that she has a ready-made sketch of the entire drawing in her memory, thought out to the smallest details, which she mechanically recreates on paper.

FOLK MASTERS - SISTERS IRINA AND SOFIA GOMENYUK

Getting to know Umanskaya painting, it should be noted first of all the folk artists - sisters Irina and Sofia Gomenyuk, who are prominent representatives of this type of folk art. The craftswomen felt, suffered and reflected in their works, each in their own way, that perfect aesthetic harmony that never exists in nature. Such works by I. Gomenyuk as “Steppe Poppies” and “Steppe Weed” are the most characteristic ofUmanskaya folk painting. It has its own vision of nature and its own artistic sound. A rather free arrangement of elements on the plane (flowers, leaves, stems, etc.), lack of strict symmetry, a characteristic rhythm of elements that create the impression that the weed stems in the painting “Steppe Weed” are moving freely under the breath of the wind. In another painting, “Steppe Poppies,” which is more static in nature in the central part, there is also dynamics, especially in the upper right and left edges. The elements of the painting are mostly directed upward, creating a certain rhythm that is characteristic of the entire picture.

The colors of the painting are saturated, bright, rich.

FEDOR PANKO - OUTSTANDING REPRESENTATIVE OF THE PETRIKOVSKAYA SCHOOL OF DECORATIVE PAINTING

The main center of Ukrainian decorative painting, where its own school has developed, is the village of Petrikovka in the Dnepropetrovsk region. The drawings of Petrykivka craftswomen and craftsmen are improvisations made easily and masterfully, mainly on a white background. Artists use homemade brushes, aniline, watercolor, tempera or gouache paints diluted in egg yolk. Petrikov painting is widely known not only in our country, but also far beyond its borders.
What are the main drawing techniques and means by which the emotional expressiveness of these works is achieved? The outstanding compositional principle of any work is the organization of space. Regarding Petrykivka painting, it should be emphasized that it is the organization of space that plays the main role here, but in no case is it the mechanical filling of it. In works the best masters Petrikovskaya painting White background acquires content and activity. It is interpreted as one of the means of artistic expression, the significance of which is far from being limited to the function of highlighting paint and enhancing its shape and sonority. This white color, in which the stems and leaves, flowers and buds “see the light”, and are not simply strung on a conventional line of the diagram. Hence this amazing technical elasticity of “vases”, “runners”, “bouquets”, which seem to radiate vitality, without any naturalism, expressing with their beauty the deep ideas of the constant movement of nature, the essence of the eternal processes of reproduction. The compositions of classical Petrikov painting are characterized by a balanced scale of motifs relative to neighboring elements and the whole sheet, a clear modal interval (rather than a gradual, barely noticeable stretch) in the increase in the size of individual elements, which is reminiscent of chord harmonies in folk diatonic music. Harmonic contrast plays an important role. Sharp alternates with rounded, straight line with wavy, large elements with small, etc., the main colors of the spectrum are compared with additional ones.
Thus, the main color scheme of classical Petrykivka painting is red-green, and the secondary color scheme is yellow-blue. The means of expression are very laconic, but they are used to their full potential. From only two or three primary elements (line, imprint, spot) a variety of motifs is obtained, although in each separate work their number is also limited. And live improvisation provides countless options. One of brightest representatives the famous Petrykivka decorative painting isFedor Panko - a talented and original artist. He was born in the village of Petrikivka. Since childhood, the artist observed the beauty of the southern steppe and the charm and uniqueness of folk art of painting. Having studied traditional Petrykivka painting in detail, the master did not limit himself only to traditional elements, he closely studies various plants and flowers in nature and creates new ornamental motifs: spikelets of various cereals, sunflower flowers, peas, hops, a fluffy dandelion head, etc.. Taking from nature forms of real birds - a peacock, a rooster or a pheasant, he sometimes combines individual elements and creates the image of a fabulous firebird. The artist admires the modest and inconspicuous gray cuckoo and often paints it on a branch with red viburnum berries - a symbol of girlish beauty.
The author’s ability to create complex psychological plots using visual means is demonstrated by a series of pictorial panels made in tempera on cardboard, united common theme"The legend about the Petrykivka cherry." It is interesting to see how the artist successfully implements his plan, using the emotional influence of colors in this series. They are either harmoniously calm, tonal in the scene of the lovers’ meeting, or alarming and contrasting in the film dedicated to years of difficult times. And on the last, final panel of the series, against a blue, calmly majestic background of the sky, a white and red Petrykivka cherry tree is depicted, growing on the grave of lovers. She stands like an ancient tree of life, like a symbol of victory over death. Such figurative illumination of the topic is certainly a new phenomenon in the art of Petrykivka residents.
An interesting phenomenon in the artist’s work is the variety of wooden utensils, the painting of which he continued the traditions of ancient Petrykivka art and at the same time became new and modern. These are plates decorated with ornaments, spoons, a dish with Easter eggs, etc. It is worth noting the interesting technical searches of the master in this area: Here there is under-varnish painting, and painting with tempera without varnish, and a special varnish for tableware. Over time, Fyodor Panko increasingly admired the work of Taras Shevchenko, Oles Gonchar, Ukrainian songs, legends, and folklore. He made two portraits of T. Shevchenko: on the first he depicted the Great Kobzar in a hat and casing against a background of red flowers, and on the second - in an embroidered shirt among blossoming sunflowers. The panel "Gaydamak" is written in red colors against a mahogany background. The panel “The Wide Dnieper Roars and Moans”, made in a cold greenish tonality, is a unique example of the decorative genre. The decorative panel “Cranes and Sunflowers” ​​is interesting for its plasticity and rhythm.
The poetic images of women from Kobzar’s poem “Liley” and “Polar” are revealed in a lyrical vein. The master decorated a decorative vase and a wooden plate with portraits of T. Shevchenko, organically connected with floral patterns. Fyodor Panko painted several decorative vases based on the plots of Shevchenko’s poems - “Water is flowing from under the sycamore tree”, “The owls called to each other in the grove”, etc. ". F. Panko tried to use Petrykivka painting to decorate interiors, as well as other architectural structures.

HONORED MASTER OF FOLK ARTS - TATYANA PATA, HER STUDENTS

The most famous master among the representatives of the older generation was Tatyana Akimovna Pata (1884 - 1976). From the age of 14, she began to independently paint fireplaces, stoves, sleighs, musical instruments, make miniatures, panels, and painted carpets. At the age of 19 she got married, but 11 years later, in 1914, her husband died at the front, leaving a widow with 4 small children. The artist had a hard lot: wars, famines, the fight against poverty.
But her love for drawing, the recognition of her talent among her fellow villagers, as well as throughout Ukraine and abroad, gave her strength and inspiration for further creativity. Among other craftswomen of the older generation, Tatyana Pata’s painting style was distinguished by its picturesqueness, innovation, and poetry in creating images of plant compositions.A whole galaxy of decorative painting masters, whose creative activities are associated new stage development of folk art of Ukraine, educated by the Honored Master of Folk Art Tatyana Pata. She enriched the traditional Petrykivka ornament with new original compositions and a unique color scheme. Her cohort of students includes folk artist Marfa Timchenko, honored master of folk art Fyodor Panko, Vera Pavlenko, Galina Pavlenko-Chernichenko. Each of them brought their own style, their own creative credo. Cheerfulness, beauty and lyricism, artistic expression characterizes the works of Kiev masters Anni Sobachko-Shostak, Praskovya Vlasenko. The work of Annie Sobachko-Shostak is characterized by inexhaustible imagination when creating complex ornamental compositions, in which birds, fish, fantastic creatures are depicted among luxurious flowers,

which are organically woven into the floral ornament.

Art lesson for older preschoolers

Joyful colors of Petrikov painting. Master Class. "Flower and berry panel"

Leri Elena Aleksandrovna, teacher of TMK preschool educational institution “Khatanga combined kindergarten “Solnyshko” p. Khatanga, Taimyr Dolgano-Nenets Municipal District, Krasnoyarsk Territory

The master class is designed for teachers of preschool and school education, children of senior preschool age, parents.
Purpose: room interior decoration, visual material in cognitive activity, and such a simple composition can be used for a greeting card.
Target: acquaintance with folk fine and applied art Petrikovskaya painting. Learn to create a decorative product for interior decoration.
Tasks:
- develop children's creative abilities;
- learn rhythmically, draw panels, combine colors;
- develop imagination, spatial thinking, fine motor skills;
- develop artistic taste, sense of composition;
- cultivate accuracy in work and the ability to complete the work started;
- cultivate interest in folk crafts, traditions, and painting;
Materials:
A sheet of thick A4 paper (preferably whatman paper or half whatman paper), a simple pencil, several brushes of different sizes (homemade cat or squirrel or column watercolor), a glass for water, a small porcelain or plastic cup, a palette or a flat plate that will be used as a palette, and watercolor paints.

Petrykivka painting is a visiting card of Ukraine
The village of Petrikovka in the Dnepropetrovsk region is one of the few where the traditions of ancient folk crafts are carefully preserved. The famous Petrikovskaya painting has long become the hallmark of Ukraine. Petrikovka was founded 230 years ago by Peter Kalnyshevsky himself. And immediately an interesting custom arose in this free Cossack village: women began to paint the walls of their huts with colorful floral patterns. They were painted with brushes made of cat hair, matches wrapped in soft material, and simply with fingers. The paints were diluted with eggs and milk, and the brightest colors were chosen to match the colorful nature of the Dnieper region. Housewives competed with each other, trying to make their home the most picturesque, and looked jealously at other people's art. They said about the most successful paintings: beautiful, like in a church. But if the house remained white, they stopped greeting the owner as if she were a stranger.
Characteristic features of Petrykivka painting:
Modern Petrykivka ornament is characterized primarily as floral, predominantly floral. It is based on a careful study of the real forms of local flora and the creation on this basis of fantastic flowers that do not exist in nature (for example, “onion” or “curly”). Motifs of garden (dahlias, astri, roses) and meadow (romaine, cornflower) flowers and viburnum berries, strawberries and grapes are widely used.
Also characteristic are the images of foliage, which is called “fern,” buds and feathery lacy foliage.
In addition to brushes, Petrikov craftsmen use stems, wood chips, and paint berries and some flowers simply with their fingers.

Step-by-step process for completing the work:

1. Real Petrikov craftsmen do not use a simple pencil in their work, but our master class is designed for children, and therefore, before starting work, we come up with approximately our own ornament and sketch it with a pencil. We outline the contours of the flowers with a round pattern so that they turn out clear. In the berries we simply outline the top and bottom. And outline the location of the leaves.

2. By the fifth year of life, children are already familiar with the unconventional drawing technique of “fingerprinting”, and therefore they can easily make any berries; in our ornament it is a viburnum.
In fact, you can draw berries with anything, but fingers are convenient because they are always “at hand” and they come in five sizes.

3. Next, we start drawing flowers, the first one - we will draw using the “grain” element.
A “grain” is a simple stroke, the profile of which depends on the brush. It is one of the main elements of Petrykivka painting, with the help of which all ornamental motifs are created.
Along the line drawn with a pencil, strokes called “grains” are applied with a brush. The brush must be held so that the tendril of the “grain” is perpendicular to the line. In this case, press the body of the brush so that the smear has the shape of a drop of water. By repeating the stroke many times, you should try to get the same distance between strokes. This helps develop the eye and rhythm in the image.

Draw the second flower with your finger. Starting from the top, press your finger firmly onto the paper and loosen it as you move down, the contours will be brighter and more visible at the top, and the color at the bottom will be weaker.

We also fill the middle of this flower, the petals will be shorter.

5. We make a smaller flower with an element called “curved grain”.
“Curved grain” is a very common element with the help of which “feathery foliage”, “buds”, and flower petals are formed.
To make a “curved grain” you need to lower the tip of the brush onto the paper near the vertical line. Extending a thin line of the antennae, make a slight turn of the brush. This stroke is completed by pressing the “heel” of the brush onto the paper.

5.3. This is how the flowers turn out.

6. So, let's draw the leaves. I drew the basic shapes of the leaves, but this does not mean that you need to limit yourself to an example; there can be many options, depending on your imagination. When drawing a leaf, a transitional stroke is used: first, a lighter tone is applied to the brush, and then the very tip is immersed in paint of a darker tone, up to black.

6.2. The stroke begins from the tip of the brush (point) and then, pressing more and more towards the middle and decreasing towards the end of the stroke, we again reach the point.

This is how we make teeth on the leaf.

6.3. We simply paint over the middle of the leaf with a light tone.

6.4. This is how the leaves turn out

7. Paint the middle of the first flower with a bright color, I painted it yellow. And we finish the stems with a thin brush.

8. Draw small three-petal flowers in empty spaces. They are also drawn with “grains” and “curved grains”.

8.3. We got 5 flowers, more is possible.

9. Thus, we also draw the leaves of the flowers.

9.1. We simply paint the stems with a thin brush. Children can be asked to finish drawing with a felt-tip pen.

And at the very end, combining the details of the ornament with the help of “pitushins”.

The difference between Podolsk buildings and, in particular, huts from the huts of central Ukraine is their greater decorativeness, not only in mass ratio, but also in the colors of the walls and the use of their area for complex graphic and colorful compositions - Ukrainian paintings.

On the outside, as already noted, the Podolsk hut is whitewashed only on two sides - the front and one side, while the other side and back are coated with red clay and only wide white stripes are drawn along their edges in the form of a frame. The same white stripe usually borders the small window in the back wall, and the front windows are lined with colored clay. The prayer is sharply separated from the walls of the hut by red clay plaster.

This strong and bold coloring of the hut, giving it an unusually expressive and decorative appearance, is often complemented by paintings that are extremely diverse in subject, technique and style and sometimes rise to the heights of great decorative and graphic skill.

On the outside of the wall, paintings are most often located under the roof, in the form of a frieze, sometimes going down to the living room in the corners of the hut; there are cornices around the hut above the barn. Windows and doors are framed with bold garland, and murals in the form of wreaths, bouquets or individual branches are placed in the spaces between the windows. Outbuildings - chicken houses, cellars, sheds - are also often painted.

Hut with painting in the village. Skazintsy

Here the painting is usually simpler, but sometimes you can find exclusively expressive forms. So, in the village Makova, Kamenets district managed to see a barn, on the gray surface of the walls of which, at their full height, conventionally geometricized branches of a giant flower were drawn with wide bold strokes. Judging by the boldness of the lines, the intuitive understanding of decorative tasks, and the sparseness of the drawing, which generally expressed his entire inner essence, this painting must be counted among the creations of genuine talent, who, moreover, had at his disposal only clay, chalk and soot to reveal it.

Stove with painting in the village. Izrailovka

Here the stove is richly painted, especially the “fireplace” and “rough”; there are many paintings all over the free field of the walls, sometimes in the form of separate compositions, sometimes in the form of friezes, and sometimes, like wallpaper, filling the entire wall; The slabs and beams are also painted. The ceiling is painted less often; here the painting is located in the form of a bouquet or wreath closer to the “pokutty” - the red corner. It is also relatively rare for the clay floor of a hut to be painted with a simple design, usually with intersecting lines. But the walls of the entryway are often and richly painted, the wide areas of which provide great freedom for bold ideas.

Wreath - painting on the wall of a hut in the village. Panevtsy

Ukrainian paintings can be found throughout Podolia. There are few of them in the north, but in the western and middle parts, especially in Transnistria, their presence in the house is a common occurrence. True, there are villages where painting is rare, but more often there are many of them, and in a number of villages there is not a single hut that is not decorated with painting to one degree or another. Each village has its own characteristics - in some the huts are covered with paintings inside and outside, in others - only on the outside; There are villages where you can find very few external paintings, and sometimes without any external hint of them, but where all the huts inside are completely covered with them.

Material and techniques of painting

The material and techniques of painting are extremely primitive. The background is a clay wall, either whitewashed or tinted with blue and cyan, soot - gray, green paint - green, or colored clay. This is done so that the walls do not get dirty so quickly and the painting lasts longer. Usually it is renewed for the patronal feast, Easter or Trinity Sunday and rarely lasts longer than a year. The materials are multi-colored clays, soot, blue, plant juices; at late times mineral paints are in great use different colors who buy in the city or at fairs from Jews. These paints are diluted in a very liquid flour paste or in water with milk and the design is applied with a feather, a flower or a homemade brush made from a “kitten tail”; Circles are marked using round utensils, such as a frying pan.

Addressing everyday meaning paintings, it should be noted that at present they have lost their ritual significance and connection with beliefs. There was undoubtedly such a connection in the past; Perhaps the custom of leaving the back wall of the hut unbleached arose and strengthened in connection with the belief that this would protect the owners from death, just as the custom of updating paintings for annual or patronal holidays undoubtedly indicates their ritual significance in the past. The presence in the painting of certain geometric (cross, star) and plant (hops, periwinkle, borage, grapes) elements, which have received a firmly established symbolic meaning in the popular consciousness, can serve as a guide in studying the history of the emergence and development of paintings and determining their internal meaning. At the present time, paintings are a purely aesthetic phenomenon. Neither the authors of the paintings nor anyone else in the modern village connects the presence of paintings or their individual elements in the hut with rituals and beliefs; there is no consciousness in their obligatory necessity, just as there are no certain requirements for the plot. The guiding factors in the choice of subjects and their interpretation are unjustified tradition, the individuality of the author and fashion.

Painting in the form of a frieze on the walls of a hut in the village. Settlement

The most common ornament is floral. The protozoan is found in the form of needles; the needles, outlined, turn into a leafy branch. A whole tree is almost never found, just as it is not found at all in Ukrainian ornaments. But in various modifications, garlands, branches, bouquets in flowerpots, individual flowers and wreaths are very common. Favorite subjects are garlands of maple, oak, hop, periwinkle, borage and, especially, grape leaves, which were so widely used by the church and passed from there into Ukrainian folk art. The nature of the ornament of the paintings was partially influenced by later Western styles, which had a strong impact on religious art and the everyday life of the upper strata of the population. Penetrating into the educated and wealthy environment and into the church, they became accessible to the masses and, in a simplified form and with simplified methods, were deposited here in new conditions.

Such a common plot as a bouquet or a branch in a flowerpot, performed by some girls, clearly reflects these influences: often the very arrangement of the picture, widely and magnificently using the entire background space, the curvature of the lines, the curved shapes of the flowerpot - all this is from the Baroque, which in architecture , in carving and painting, not only developed widely in Ukraine before the eyes of the people, but also took on its own shades and features here, which rightfully distinguished this style into a special Ukrainian Baroque.

It is much less common to see images of birds and animals in paintings. Usually these are chickens, roosters, peahens, jackdaws, horses - the animal world is close, understandable, realistic, and not wild animals or fantastic animals. Even the pelican and owl, once popular in folk paintings, did not find a place in the paintings. People look for subjects for their artistic creativity in the surrounding nature, they are inspired by it, it is the basis of their creativity. But the use of material that gives the people environment and nature, the ability to perceive an impression and express it technically, are different. They vary depending on the personality and technical skill of the individual author. In the paintings, in addition to purely geometric motifs, sometimes without a plot, we encounter an attempt to depict a branch or flower, but with the simplest straight lines, which only hardly reveal the true, perhaps unclear, creative idea to the author himself.

Bouquet in a flowerpot - painting by Ganna Babchenko on the wall of a hut in the village. Skazintsy

Walking along this path, from purely geometric ornament through geometrized plant forms, we will encounter a pure form of plant ornament, but even here we will often look in vain for certain plants. This is a clearly expressed plant, realistic enough to reveal the author's desire to give a plant, but too general to individualize it. This is the idea of ​​a plant and a flower, their diagram, very close to the real one. And finally, the author’s idea is concretized and he either has the ability to express it, or accidentally finds a successful line, but the ornament acquires individual expressiveness and, of course, in graphically and stylized conventional forms and colors he receives not just a flower, but a rose, a bell, not a bird at all, but a rooster, not an abstract animal, but a horse. Here the convention of explicit realism varies depending on the author's abilities and technical skill.

Ukrainian folk decorative painting in the pre-revolutionary period developed in the form of paintings of round wooden sculptures, furniture, wooden household items, wall paintings of dwellings and outbuildings, as well as Easter eggs. The fate of each of these types of folk decorative painting is far from the same.

Many wooden figures have survived to this day, decorating them almost until the end of the 18th century. church iconostases. In many areas, especially in villages, such figures were painted with oil paints. These paintings disappeared at the beginning of the last century, when the Synod decided to remove all sculptural images of saints from churches, seeing in them a manifestation of the influence of Catholicism on the Orthodox Church.

However, painted wooden sculptures continued to remain in folk life in the 19th century. in the form of carved beehives depicting Zosima and Savvaty - patrons of beekeeping. They were almost mandatory for apiaries in the northern and middle lane Ukraine. In the southern steppe part of Ukraine there were hives in the form of a Cossack's head with a forelock or a whole seated figure. In addition to painted beehives - sculptures, beehives with various pictures painted on them were common at this time. Among them one could find images of Zheleznyak and Gonta on horseback and with spears in their hands, as well as Adam and Eve in paradise, a bell ringer at work, a rooster leading chickens, etc.

Oil painting of homes (especially doors and shutters) and furniture became widespread in peasant life. These paintings were usually of an ornamental and decorative nature.

Particularly interesting are the paintings of chests, which in peasant families were peculiar heirlooms passed down from generation to generation. In the hut, the chest usually stood in the most visible place and was supposed to indicate the wealth of the family.

The shape of the chests and the nature of their paintings make it possible to almost unmistakably determine which locality they come from. It is interesting to note that the manufacture of chests is associated mainly with the forest and forest-steppe zones; in the southern regions, chests were made from imported timber; sometimes in the steppe regions, ready-made chests were brought from the central and northern provinces, and they were painted on the spot.

An interesting chest is from the Kiev region, dating back to the 18th century. and stored in the Kiev Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art. On the front wall in the center there is a depiction of “Cossack Mamai” playing the bandura. On both sides of it are painted two large flowerpots with lush flowers. In terms of style, this is a folk interpretation of the baroque embroidery and carpet patterns of that time.

A similar motif can be seen on one of the linen storage boxes, dating back to the beginning of the 19th century.

Chest paintings of the 19th - early 20th centuries. have distinct local characteristics. Chernigov chests are predominantly black or dark blue with bright large flowers - white, yellow, red - in medallions and clusters in the form of wavy patterns. Poltava chests are similar to those from Chernigov: they are also painted on a dark background with large floral patterns in clear tones with a clear rhythmic repetition. Something completely different can be observed on chests from the Dnepropetrovsk region. They are usually colored bright colors: yellow, more often - juicy green. The ornament is smaller in comparison with the Poltava one and is very diverse in motifs.

The chests of the western regions of Ukraine differ from the chests of the Dnieper region. They are more massive and painted mainly with small ornaments, arranged in decorative frames that emphasize the shape of the chest. Sometimes the ornament used in the paintings of chests in the Lviv region is close to the ornament of wall paintings or designs of printed fabrics. Other chests from the western regions of the Lviv region, in terms of the nature of the paintings, are close to Polish folk decorative painting.

Hutsul chests look like tables. They are decorated with contour geometric patterns, within which the figures are painted with brown, ocher, black, and sometimes white paints. Here the paints only help to reveal the carved ornament.

Wooden painted dishes, or rather wooden plates for bread of round or oval shape, have become no less widespread in folk life. In the 18th century they were cut out by hand, and with late XIX- turned on a lathe. Festive plates had an exquisite shape - square with embedded corners (semicircular or in the form of elongated petals). The depth of the plates is small and almost the same in all areas. The shape of the plate also determined the composition of the painting. In the earliest plates, the main part of the ornamental composition filled the entire middle area, and around, in the free places, additional, smaller ornamental motifs were placed. In later paintings, the ornamentation of the rim, balanced with central part decor. The coloring of the plate paintings is similar to the chest paintings and has the same local characteristics.

According to the plot, these are mainly floral ornaments, compositions with birds among flowers and berries, and even more often - images of fish, a knife, fork, green cucumbers, etc. Such plates were intended for festive table, and on weekdays they were displayed on a shelf and served as decoration for the hut.

In the XVIII - early XIX centuries. Oil painting of carved parts of sleighs and carts became widespread. Later, the backs of sleighs and carts began to be decorated with straight and curved colored stripes of different thicknesses along the flat plane of the board.

Painted sleighs from the Uman region date back to 1911, where elements of geometric carved contour patterns are combined with floral ones. The center of a separate painting here is a six-petalled rosette cut out like a compass, around which are arranged twigs with berries and a traditional plant motif called “vylog” and common in wall paintings, ceramics and embroidery. There are also paintings in which, along with geometric and floral patterns, there are images of fish, birds and horses.

In the 1920s, in different areas of the Kiev region and Podolia, there were paintings on the backs of sleighs, similar in character to the above. Of the new elements of the ornament, images of Soviet emblems were distributed - a five-pointed star, a sickle, a hammer, and the Soviet coat of arms. With changes in forms of farming in rural areas and with the advent of motor transport, this type of painting gradually disappears, and other types of painting come to the fore.

Since the mid-1930s, folk craftsmen from the village. Petrikovka, Dnepropetrovsk region, sisters V. and G. Pavlenko and M. Timchenko begin to paint small wooden boxes of different shapes that served as powder compacts with oil paints. The paintings were done directly on wood without any primer and were therefore very unstable.

After the Great Patriotic War, such paintings were revived on a new technical basis - it was already varnish painting on a black background, also based on the traditional Petrykivka floral ornament. Similar paintings were carried out by Petrykivka craftsmen who worked at the Kiev Experimental Ceramics and Art Factory.

And since 1958, a varnish painting workshop opened at the Druzhba factory in Petrikovka itself. Young artists, led by folk artist F. Panko, turned to local traditions of decorative painting. The Petrikovites began to do some of their paintings not on black, but on an ocher or lush green background, i.e., the way chests were usually painted in the Dnepropetrovsk region long before the revolution.

Appeal to local traditions ensured the successful development of a new artistic craft.

Recently, there has been a return of folk craftsmen to painting wooden plates made on a lathe. They are painted directly on wood with oil paints, and covered with transparent varnish on top, thanks to which the texture of the wood is better revealed, and the paintings themselves become clearer in color and more durable. These plates are intended for interior decoration.

B. S. Butnik-Siversky 1964