Home › Forums › Explore Media › Watercolor › Watercolor Studio › An ugly stormy sky
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September 16, 2018 at 12:15 pm #462075
I would like to make a less ugly one! The whole thing looks a bit pee-colored.
On stormy dawns/sunsets, there are often nice warm beams of light coming from little holes in an otherwise gray-blue sky. I put a light wash of new gamboge to set the lights across the whole paper, then let dry and did wet-in-wet pthalo blue/red oxide/burnt umber mix + a bit of ultramarine on top for the ‘storm’. The mixture looked like a nice grey to me in the pan, but ended up as a weird green wash on the paper. Should I be putting yellow only in the light areas so it doesn’t mix with the bluer storm areas? Or put a color in between? Or any suggestions would be very welcome!
Also, I haven’t used pthalo blue much before this, and holy moly I’ve never had to empty my water container so much. That is extremely potent pigmentation.
September 16, 2018 at 12:23 pm #695842hi, first of all I like the painting accept I think the foreground is a bit bright for such a gloomy day, but about the green , yea I think in a general sense it is a good idea to keep the yellow of a sky in areas that are to be blue,on this particular painting I think it works
Kaylen Savoie
https://www.savoieartist.com/
At least twice a year,paint something better than you ever painted before.September 16, 2018 at 12:32 pm #695840Hi. I wonder if maybe the mix of the warm/orangey new gamboge and the cool pthalo blue gave you that green tone that you didn’t like. Maybe try some washes of colour combinations on a scrap paper or in your sketch book and see if you can get what you need. Raw sienna/yellow ochre instead of the new gamboge might be worth a try, since they usually have a bit less red in them, which might help with the pthalo’s green leaning. I think it’s a very nice painting, though.
Noelle
September 16, 2018 at 4:48 pm #695839I like the sky. It looks a bit cluttered on the right side base of the mountain, but other than that all looks good. A bit of green in the sky is not unusual, especially for evening storms. If you don’t like the green, add some purple to the gray to neutralize it. But really, I don’t see anything wrong with the colors at all.
I would worry more about the edges. You have too many shapes in the foreground, and yet your hard edges are all in the mid ground and distance. What is your subject?
September 16, 2018 at 5:49 pm #695845Thank you! I did a little bit of testing, and a mix of quin gold + pthalo blue as the base for a ‘bluer’ yellow seemed to be a good start along with less saturated colors. At least, they seem to be in more harmony? Thumbnail:
I think some of the problem is that I am using as a reference photos I took on a bright sunny day while hiking, but also found some stormy sky images online, so ground and the sky do not match well.
@Indraneel. I have not thought about it much, but my goal was to practice painting a mountain and a bit of reflected shore, so that is probably my subject for this.
September 17, 2018 at 3:34 am #695844I find it hard to paint dark sky too
https://youtu.be/38URS94vS1M
This video really helped me a lot2 most important things I learned was
Things are not as dark as you think they are so be careful
Never get dark so soon try to build layers of lighter color first
I think they can help you a lot
September 17, 2018 at 8:31 am #695843I enjoy the conviction and movement in the painting.
I would say tate Gamboge + Pthalo blue will go green. Noelle’s suggestion to try Raw Sienna is good. For a reason I cannot explain, it is one of the pigements which doesnt go wildly green when used to create warm passages in blue skies. I also sometimes use Cadmium Orange, which is useful because with the blues it also makes grey tones.
Leslie Worth was a master at these effects.
As long as there is light, I will paint it.
September 17, 2018 at 2:48 pm #695841It’s looking good! The main thing is if you like it better, of course. I really didn’t think the first one was “bad,” but I did see what you meant about pee-coloured. The Pthalos are so weird.
Noelle
September 17, 2018 at 11:30 pm #695846This board is so helpful! And that youtube video is great, the feel of the day is captured in a way I would like to emulate. I will also get a small tube of Raw Sienna from the artstore to try.
Some more testing on the other side of the paper (no waste! :clap:), pthalo blue + pyrrol scarlet for the sky have made a very nice gray IMO. I think I made it a bit too dark still and the light ‘holes’ are not soft enough, but color-wise it seems better. I do wish the back rock would pop more, though. Leave some white patches next time for highlights? I’m worried about making it darker…
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