The Zbukvic Emulation Experience

Sketch Learning time from Joseph Zbukvic

After the french village post-mortem I was musing about how to go about simplifying my buildings paintings.    Going smaller was my first thought and all of these are done in a 5″x7″ Strathmore sketchbook.    The paper isn’t my favorite by a long chalk but it dries very quickly and forces me to work fast.    I wanted to do multiple copies of a fairly simple Joseph Zbukvic painting and see if I could get better at seeing the big shapes and get the values.

So 4 small paintings done in a couple of hours.  You can see how things changed over the 4 paintings.   The first one is a little bitty.   I’m not getting the big value areas well and the colors are a little slapdash.  Paintings 2,3, and 4 are much better in both regards.   It was a really worthwhile exercise to do.   Seeing them all together shows a big difference to me.  Strangely I didn’t notice any difference as I was painting them.

Here’s the original Zbukvic image  – lovely isn’t it?

Original Joseph Zbukvic street scene watercolor painting
Original Joseph Zbukvic street scene watercolor painting

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