Tradition · the vocabulary
Every stroke has a name, and the name says what the hand does
Petrykivka is taught mark by mark. Learn the four strokes and you can read any composition in the tradition, tell a painted band from a printed one, and follow what a master is doing while she does it.
5 entries
The strokes
Four marks carry the whole tradition. A student practises them on a palette until the pressure curve happens without thinking.
гребінець
hrebinets · the comb
Land the brush with pressure first, then lift and drag it away into a hair-thin whisker. Lay several side by side and the row of tapering teeth reads as a comb.
Also written гребінчик.
зернятко
zerniatko · the little grain
The exact inverse of the comb: touch lightly, then press. Rank them along both sides of a stem with the points outward and the figure becomes an ear of grain, which is where the name comes from.
кривеньке зернятко
kryvenke zerniatko · the crooked grain
The same grain laid on an arc, which needs the fine brush. Two of them joined at their rounded ends, whiskers springing from one point, make a half-open bud.
горішок
horishok · the hazelnut
Two curved comb-strokes set facing each other like brackets, with the gap between them filled by a grain. The closed form reads as a hazelnut. This is the first element a student builds rather than simply lays down.
перехідний мазок
perekhidnyi mazok · the transition stroke
A dry brush takes colour A into its body and colour B on the tip, and one pull lays a continuous gradient across the mark. This is the most identifiable move in the whole tradition, and the hardest thing for a printed or vector imitation to reproduce.
7 entries
The elements
Forms assembled out of those marks. Several of them exist nowhere in nature.
цибулька
tsybulka · the little onion
Built from elongated crooked grains. The name comes from its resemblance to the imprint of an onion cut in half. Artists call it the emblem of the whole art, and there is a monument to it in the centre of Petrykivka.
кучерявка
kucheriavka · the curly one
A flower whose signature is a twisted, curled comb-stroke. It belongs to the group of Petrykivka flowers that have no counterpart in nature.
петушиння
petushynnia · the fine tracery
The web of very fine lines that, in the painters' own words, gives a composition its transparency and weightlessness. This is what the cat-fur brush exists for.
Keep the Ukrainian name. The English word “rooster” is a false friend here: this is the linear web, never the bird.
пуп'янок
pupianok · the half-open bud
Two crooked grains joined at their rounded ends, with the whiskers issuing from a single point.
листок
lystok · the leaf
The characteristic leaf is an acanthus form, which Petrykivka masters call «папороть» — fern. The local name and the botany part company, and the local name wins.
калина / ягода
kalyna / yahoda · viburnum / berry
Set with the fingertip, in clusters. The berry is a technique of the hand rather than a stroke of the brush.
колосок
kolosok · the ear of grain
The figure that appears when grains are ranked along both sides of a stem.
2 entries
The compositions
The arrangements the elements are gathered into, on paper, on an object or along a wall.
бігунець
bihunets · the runner
Flowers set at equal intervals with the tilt changing each time, joined by a light wavy line, with long-whiskered leaves on either side. The changing tilt is what keeps a border from going mechanical, and it is a reliable way to tell a painted runner from a repeated vector one.
In architecture the same band becomes the frieze, known in the village as лиштва.
вазон
vazon · the vase
One of the main compositions alongside гілочка, букет and килимок — a growing arrangement rising from a vessel, filled out with the smaller elements.
The order it is taught in
What a beginner does, in sequence
This is the classroom order used in Ukraine, and it is the order the lessons here follow.
- 01зернятко on a palette, until the pressure curve is automatic
- 02гребінець, the same stroke run backwards
- 03кривеньке зернятко, the grain laid on an arc
- 04горішок, the first compound element
- 05перехідний мазок, one brush carrying two paints
- 06травичка, колосок, пуп'янок, ягода
- 07листок, цибулька, кучерявка and the named garden flowers
- 08бігунець, the first whole composition
An honest note
Where these names came from
The strokes carried no special names for most of the tradition’s life. The terms «зернятко», «гребінчик» and «горішок» were brought into use in the twentieth century by the art historian Borys Butnyk-Siverskyi (1901–1983), and they have since been taken up by masters and by the schools. The vocabulary is genuine and it is in daily use. It is also, in part, a scholarly codification of something that was passed on by hand and by eye.
One term is deliberately absent. «Ягідка» circulates online as the name of a stroke, and the sources reached for this page give the berry as a technique of the finger and the motif as калина or ягода. It stays out of the list until a master confirms the usage.
