This self-portrait is a confession of a moment in time. The painting captures one of the countless, nearly identical yet entirely unique morning rituals of a young artist — at the very beginning of his journey, both in craft and in self-discovery. Created during his first year at the Academy of Arts, the work immerses the viewer in the quiet space of an academic studio that has not yet awakened. The room is divided by plywood partitions — behind them lie the worlds of students, easels, plaster casts, and stools. In the foreground is a dim, secluded corner, part tea room, part storage — and within it, the artist himself, young and barely visible, dissolves into the twilight. His figure is not rendered in detail — he’s only a shadow, a silhouette warming his hands around a mug, lit by the faint morning glow of streetlamps on the Third Line of Vasilievsky Island. It’s that quintessential Petersburg winter, when light doesn't break until after eleven. The windows look out onto Rumyantsev Garden and its commemorative obelisk, silently reminding us of the meaning of labor, struggle, and triumph. Every detail here carries symbolic weight: the steam from the kettle — the fragile, flickering breath of the studio; the poppy-seed bun — the sole source of energy after a sleepless night of exhausting work; the plywood partitions — boundaries between the personal and the professional, solitude and community. The artist places himself not at the center, but at the edge — and this is no accident. It’s a quiet declaration of his role within the vast system of the Academy, of how a student becomes part of something greater, almost vanishing in the process. There’s a deep awareness of personal smallness — and at the same time, of the monumental task facing anyone who enters these halls with the dream of becoming an artist. This is a portrait from within — unposed and unadorned, just the truth. In this work, the artist sought to convey his quiet obsession with the craft. It’s more than a self-portrait — it’s a letter to himself, both past and future, to the painter who has only just begun to understand what it means to live through art.