Skies and Clouds — June — July 2012 Homework Thread

[painterbear]

Post your questions, comments, and sky and cloud paintings here for the Skies and Clouds Monthly Class for June and July. Thanks, Sylvia

[pjartwc]

I would love to paint fluffy white clouds in watercolor that could compete with the oil and pastel artists. Unfortunately mine turn out like white blobs in blue paint. So I usually paint skies with various lines of color or stormy skies. This is how I paint a landscape with a stormy sky.

I wet the entire area covered by sky and background hills. I wet around buildings and objects. I then use Winsor blue (red shade), Brown Madder, and Cadmium orange. I use a flat brush and paint short vertical strokes. I took a large round brush and moved it across the sky turning the brush as I went to lift some of the paint. I let it dry.


The image dried much too light - so I repeated the process. I wet the entire area with clean water. I redo the whole area as even the clean water leaves a water line. This one was more to my liking.


11x15 Arches cold-press

[painterbear]

Thanks for starting us off with your technique for skies, Jan.

I like the one you said is your favorite too. Looks like rain off in the distance, but the barn is still enjoying some sunshine.



Sylvia

[samben84]

Beautiful sky, Jan. I really like your color choices. Watching videos online, almost everyone I've seen uses UM blue or maybe a touch of cerulean or yellow ochre.

[BJ3]

Hello Everyone. .
Well, here are my homework attempts for this week.
First: all are on Strathmore, CP 140#; W & N Paints.


1.)Cobalt + a hint of Ultramarine; Rose Madder and Raw Sienna for the sky colours. I should have allowed the pink to dry a bit more, BEFORE putting in the light blue clouds? That didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to.


2.)Cobalt Blue and Rose Madder for the sky. These clouds looked “splashed on” to me! I used a damp mop brush to swirl out the cloud shapes and then a damp tissue to get a little more white to show.


3.)Ultramarine and Perm. Rose for the sky. A damp tissue and some damp brush work – still kinda wimpy and too many hard edges.


4.)This one I tried to follow Barbara’s instructions, but got lost between the computer & my studio!
Cerulean + a touch of Indigo; Diox Violet and Yellow Ochre (I don’t have Gold Ochre) for the sky. Much better clouds, but the rest fell apart big time!!!

More practice tomorrow if it keeps raining and I can’t get into the garden!
Bev
P.S. Perhaps I'll take a refresher course on focusing my camera too!!!

[painterbear]

Bev,
Brava for you getting started with your skies and clouds studies.

My art instructor will be focusing on these topics during our next painting session in five weeks (now we're doing water ). Anyway, she told us as preparation we should be looking at different kinds of skies and clouds as each day passes. She also advised that we take photos of them to use as references.

In regards to your clouds feeling splashed on or wimpy...perhaps you just need to add a few shadows on the bottoms of the clouds to give some dimension to them. If you look at white fluffy clouds, they still seem to have a bit of shadowing along their bottoms or sky blue showing through here and there.

Sylvia

[BJ3]

Hi Sylvia – thanks for looking at my homework and for your comments.
I have a few questions if you don’t mind – you have suggested that adding some shadows to the bottom of the “wimpy” clouds would help. So, , , ,
Questions – I re-wet the whole sky area of the paper – right?
Do I just use a darker blue or do I mix a blue/grey or blue/mauve?
Do I just sort of “scribble” along the bottom of the clouds? Or just drop in the colours and let them mingle?

More practice, more practice!
Bev

[painterbear]

Bev,
I'm no expert on this, so take what I say with that in mind.

I would probably just moisten the clouds themselves, not the whole sky. I would mix a pale tone of bluish gray and turn the paper upside down so the bottom of the cloud is on top. Then I would put the blue/gray mix along the bottom and gently coax it to curve into the cloud.

Turn the picture right side up and soften the edges of the color you just added.

Before you do that though, go outside and look at some clouds or find photos of them in the RIL and study them to see the effect you are after. Here's one by lotsahugs that I found by opening the RIL and doing a search on the word clouds. It is a good example of what I mean about the bottoms being a bit gray (and even some in the middle of some masses):



Sylvia

[BJ3]

Thanks for the photo Sylvia - - I’ll take some here, just as soon as it stops raining!! We needed it!!!
I did find a great photo in the RIL from WthrLady which I’ll attempt to paint tomorrow.
In the meantime, I took your advice and tried to add some shadows to my sorry clouds and ended up with the following:



1.Perhaps a little too uniform in my shadows – eh? It looks like lace edging on a sheet! And I still have that big blue blob in the middle that I haven’t done anything about. I cropped the picture, ‘cause this is about skies.



2.In this one, I added some yellow highlights and tried to add some shadows but they don’t show up – probably needed to use more paint & less water! Cropped this one too.

Okay, that’s it for me until I get the next practice done - wish me luck!
Bev

[samben84]

Bev, you're doing great! I would be proud to have either one of those on a painting.

I've worked on some a bit, but nothing to write home about.

[painterbear]

Bev,
I see much more realistic looking clouds now that you've added those shadings.

Sylvia

[BJ3]

Thank you Sandy – you say the nicest things to me and always make me feel so much better! (((HUGS)))
Your landscape is great – I saw it in the Gallery!
Bev

[BJ3]

Hi Sylvia - - - me again!
Tried to do another sky painting but it’s not quite what I wanted it to be. I’m still afraid of putting down dark colours - - - what a dolt!
I hope WthrLady (Caryl) doesn’t hate me for the horrible job I did of reproducing her beautiful photo from the RIL “a little rain must fall”.

I masked the FG ‘cause if the sky turned out okay, I was going to try painting in the FG from the ref. photo but I think this one is going to get turned over and I’ll start again tomorrow! Sigh. .
Bev

[painterbear]

Bev,
You are proving the adage of practice makes perfect (or maybe it should be "better").

These clouds are much more realistic looking.

Sylvia

[BJ3]

Hi Sylvia . . . I worked on this over the weekend and its better, but I can still see big fat mistakes! Oh well, it’s on the back of another “failed” attempt so nothing lost really.



Guess I’m the only one here who’s interested in learning how to paint clouds/skies. That’s okay though, it just means that I have you all to myself!
Bev