Planning Your Painting

For Croatian-born artist Joseph Zbukvic, planning is everything when it comes to watercolour painting. "Painting begins with the decision of what to paint," he says, "If that's wrong, the rest is a waste of time". In his latest film, Joseph uses Rome as his backdrop to show us how to set about planning a painting. Concentrating on the value of observation and drawing, Joseph describes how to select the subject and work out the best composition, before starting to paint. His demonstrations include a market scene, a quiet street, alongside the river Tiber and outside the pantheon. He finishes with a large-scale watercolour of the Piazza del Popolo, which he sketches in situ and completes back in the studio.

He begins with a short lesson in the basic shapes of composition and shows how these guide the viewer in and balance the elements of the picture. This leads on to a watercolour sketch in a quiet back street that demonstrates the use of shapes and tones: “I don’t think about colour, I just think about tone … warm, cool”.

Rome is a busy, bustling city and Joseph is at pains to show you how to find and isolate a subject in the middle of crowds and confusion. He is looking all the time for shapes and edges and the time spent not painting in this film contains some of the most important lessons. He is insistent about understanding and absorbing a place in order to commit it to memory: a photograph takes a moment and isn’t a real memory, he explains. Joseph is also insistent on the importance of working and sketching all the time: “Not matter how good you are, you should practise your craft”, he reminds us. The result of this is that he is able to produce pencil sketches quickly and accurately, although he also emphasises the importance of not getting bogged down in detail and accuracy: “Just because it’s there, doesn’t mean you have to put it in” is perhaps the most sound piece of advice in the whole film. Details can overwhelm both the composition and the viewer.

This film comes from a different perspective to many, but Joseph is an astute observer and an excellent communicator and his message: observe, practise, simplify comes across loud and clear.

Joseph's peregrinations lead him into quiet corners as well as busy piazzas and he shows you how to select what you are going to paint, looking for the compositions that work best, with light, shade and tone. For Joseph, colour is something to be added at the end of a work when the form and composition are complete.

Sketching in pencil and watercolour, Joseph works in a variety of locations before completing a full-scale painting back in the studio.

Henry Malt