Once, on the Internet, I came across an old matryoshka doll that struck my imagination. Matryoshka was put up for sale at an online auction. Matryoshka, about 30 cm high, 1 local in laconic colors of red-green-brown. I hurried to share my find with my mother, confident that she would appreciate it. Mom told me that this matryoshka doll of the famous artist on nesting dolls Alexander Vlasov. He lived and worked in the 60s of the 20th century. Matryoshka called "Bread. Salt." was in those years the visiting card of the artist. I could not take my eyes off this matryoshka and decided to reproduce the old sample in my author's reading, especially since I just had a wooden blank of a similar shape. And I got to work.

At the beginning, it was necessary to decide in what style the ornament on the scarves on each matryoshka and on the dresses would be. I decided to add children to the matryoshka, because the theme of motherhood is one of the main ones in my work. I tried to choose concise simple poses where children express their love for their mother.

The ornament on the scarf of Vlasov's matryoshka reminded me of the ornament on old Russian spinning wheels from the Russian North. I tried to recreate this ornament on the first nesting doll from 7. I found a few pictures that caught my imagination with a similar ornament and arranged them on subsequent matryoshkas. Since the first matryoshka featured a delightful fairy-tale bird, for other shawls I found a lion, other cute birds and even a fish.

It seemed interesting to me how the artist Vlasov depicted hair on a nesting doll. But I decided to make the strands of hair with wavy lines, unlike the original. So it seemed to me more feminine and gentle. I used a wood burning machine as well as the author of an antique doll.

I decided to make the ornament on the dress more complex, vegetal without burning out. I picked up photographs of old embroidered ornaments from Russian sarafans and church fabrics and patiently reproduced it first in pencil, then with a thin brush, then made a neat fill with color, then worked on the ornament in more detail in several layers, trying to convey the sparkle of gold threads.

I decided to keep the color scheme approximately. The main color was red. I diversified red with multiple shades, as I really like complex and diverse color combinations. I made the matryoshka on the eve of the Easter holiday in one breath and could not stop. The work turned out bright, rich, joyful and I came up with the name "Festive"

I filmed some stages of my work. This can be seen in the attached video. I will also add a few photos of the finished work and sources of inspiration, including a photo of a nesting doll by artist Alexandr Vlasov .