The work of L. A. Ilyina, who operates in easel and book engraving without detailed sketch development, is significantly complemented by drawings in pencil, ink, pastel, marker, sanguine, and black watercolor. Here, she also works with precise and economical means, but more freely, sometimes in a more intimate manner. Without losing the individuality of her artistic thinking, Ilyina is extraordinarily versatile in drawing, rich in ways of understanding nature. In the 1960s, Ilyina draws a lot and diversely. She creates drawn portraits in which a high degree of artistic generalization is combined with a convincing characterization of a specific character in their unique humanity. Such are "Hunter from Ula-Khol" (1960, ink), "Girl" (1960, ink), "Portrait of a Kyrgyz" (1960, pencil), and the sharply characterized portrait "Corneliu Baba" (1961, pencil). It is striking how accurately and monumentally, with minimal means, the genre-landscape motif is depicted in the linear drawing "Drawers" (From the series "In Japan," 1961, marker). A different solution, a different image is characteristic of the pencil and pastel drawings created during her trip to Italy (1966)—here, there is a greater enthusiasm from the artist not only for the appealing objectivity of forms but also for the spatiality and pictorial quality of the environment ("Morning in Rome. San Pietro," "Villa Garibaldi," "Assisi," "Ponte Vecchio"). The drawings of Ilyina from later periods (mainly in pencil) are virtuosic, swift in the sensation of plastic form. She continues to show keen interest in human character ("Young Man," 1975, colored pencil; "Aisha," 1975, lead pencil), genre motifs ("Two," 1974, lead pencil; "Model in Interior," 1974, pencil; "In the Studio," 1974, lead pencil; "Girl with a Bowl," 1983, pencil), and landscapes ("Twilight," 1984, pencil; "In the Foothills," 1984, pencil). Increasingly, Ilyina softens the constructiveness and object expressiveness of her drawing, often placing her models in an environment, tracing the connection between humans and the world of objects. In doing so, she poses and solves complex spatial and plastic tasks, sometimes with an emphasized dominance. These explorations in drawing are linked to the trends in her engraving works of recent years.
