Sketch of costumes for "Tale of Tsar Saltan" 1919

Nicholas Roerich’s costume sketch uses gouache, watercolor, and pencil, to bring these figures into being. Looking at this, I can really feel for Roerich, imagining him sketching away, trying to get the costumes just right for the "Tale of Tsar Saltan." You can see him working through the folds of their skirts, how the shawls drape. It’s like he’s not just designing clothes but capturing the very essence of these characters. Notice the texture here—the way the gouache and watercolor blend to give this soft, almost dreamlike quality. See how he uses the color, with the dark reds and blues. It gives the feeling of folk art, and you see this across other painters work when they explore such themes. All these artists are riffing off one another, drawing inspiration across time, each adding their own spin. Painting is like that, an ongoing conversation where we borrow, steal, and build on what came before, trying to make something new.