Church of St Nicholas the Wonderworker on Askold's Grave. Murals

The dome depicts the Second Coming of the Saviour — the most joyful and long-awaited feast for every righteous Christian. That is exactly how we tried to show it.

The work took us almost three years, and a little over a year of that went into preparation: building the model and drawing the full-size cartoons.

Our task was to paint the dome — around 100 square metres — after a sketch by the artist Alexander Pigarev. The project was initiated by Bogdan Batrukh, the driving spirit and patron behind many remarkable undertakings.

The paint was KEIM: superb, though with a character of its own.

Besides me, the painting itself was done by Iryna Ganina (the whole sky) and Valeriy Vasiliev. The rosette at the zenith was cast in plaster from my drawing by Vadim Matlaev.

We are now painting the walls of the church.