Skies are pretty hard to paint, yet so relaxing! And after making so many of them I have learned a few things that work for me.
The first thing I relearned was that quantity really does matter when it comes to learning. I often feel like Im wasting time making small, pretty things like these, but its not a waste!
Less is more
And with that I mean that the skies looked the best if I used 1-2 layers. The more I fiddled and layered, the worse it got! So I needed to get what I wanted right away. This forced me to commit to the darkest darks and brightest brights. And it helped me assess values and colors on my reference photos. I feel much more confident now! I learned better water control, and when I paint other things now, it feels different!
I also learned that stormy skies and soft sunsets are much easier than a blue sky with fluffy clouds...
Im not as scared of hard edges anymore! And Im less precious. Which I enjoy. Im excited to see how that translates going forward.
Let me explain how I did some of the skies!
This sky was painted in one layer. I wet the whole area, then put in a more diluted paynes grey. I then added a band of the darkest dark with saturated neutral tint. I added some more water in over it to move it a little. Then I left it to dry a little bit tilted.
This soft sunset was pretty simple. I wet the whole area again, then made a gradient. While still wet, I added in a few horisontal streaks of pink and blue to indicate some clouds. And then the key is to just let it be! I also left this to dry tilted. Once dry I added in the foreground.
This was one of the trickiest I did. I had to fiddle with it a little to make it work. I started with a gradient of pink to dark blue, but I wasn’t bold enough and had to go in with a darker blue. (That still wasn’t dark enough!) Once dry I added in the dark blues of the clouds. I tried to stay loose, and soften some edges. Then I painted the clouds with a red and orange, letting it bleed in with the blues and also some wisps here and there. I dropped in some more reds into the blues, then I let it dry and hoped for the best! At the end I added stars with white gouache.
This one was also pretty tricky to paint due to the lined clouds. I did one wash first adding in the blues and purple, and also "painting" lines with pure water to separate the colors and get some of the light. I dropped in blues and pinks based on the reference photo to let them blend. In the second layer I painted more pure lines, softening them some, and keeping some edges, and also dropping in more paint in the wet to let it blend. It was a pure gamble really! The dark clouds were the third layer, but they also kinda looked like trees? So I saved it with some white colored pencil.
I hope this exploration of skies was helpful for you!