The article reflects the problems arising in the process of teaching painters and designers to create etudes. By the empiric way the authors of the article have come to the conclusion that it is possible to group the problems which students face when reflecting light-and-air environment in etudes. On the basis of vast teaching practice the authors distinguish such most significant problems as: • difficulty in realizing the limitation of tone range of painting and graphics in comparison with natural surroundings; • mistakes made in defining the ratio of maximum light and maximum dark elements of the natural surroundings; • difficulty in reflecting the space depth. The authors’ vast teaching experience has allowed to formulate a complex approach to eliminating the above mentioned problems combining teaching and technical aspects and providing the following skills: • the complex perception of the nature object; • the ability to establish the ratio of the big main color spots; • the understanding of the nature objects’ tone and color change mechanism; • the ability to define the dependence between the visual tone and color and the distance to the object. To realize the mentioned complex approach the authors suggest implementing a system of different exercises and trainings. In the article they describe two alternative variants of trainings. The first one molds the perception of light-and-air environment by the method of “dyeing”, with the following fixing the molded skills in creating a series of elementary academic settings. The second training is based on the stipulation that watercolor grisaille does not demand any preliminary preparation for perception the influence of light-and-air environment. Thus, according to the training methods, a student automatically gets tone ranging of the whole work area. In the authors’ opinion, in addition to the mentioned exercises, students should be offered less difficult tasks in order to fix the skills and form the dynamic stereotype of defining the light-and-air environment’s influence in etudes.