Cley, Norfolk, after a summer downpour.

Back in the ‘studio’, encouraged no end by rain.
I’ve painted this scene before, but in a different ‘mood’.  The sky, that is, not me.  In fact, the sky here was based on a photograph I took in Bristol a couple of weeks ago.

People ask me about my skies so I thought I’d (try to) describe the process for painting this one:

As usual when working in the studio, my board/easel was set at about 70 degrees.

Firstly I mixed up 3 main washes for sky/cloud colours, using Indian Red, Light Red, Winsor Blue, Ultramarine and Burnt Umber.
Some very pale Indian Red and in places Light Red were put down mainly over the bottom of the sky near the horizon and at various other parts a bit higher up (the top right section is pure untouched paper).  Clean water was also added very quickly in a few places where I knew I wanted some key soft edges, such as where the big dark top cloud’s hard edge merges to a soft one.

Then, I marked in with slightly less dilute (but still v pale) paint where the main bulks of cloud were – ultra fast.  I then ran in the top-left blue sky in a mad rush, all the while softening some edges away in places to nothing, or else into each other, with a slightly damp clean brush.  

(Painting a sky like this is really like spinning plates.  There is barely time to stand back to check if you’ve got the clouds in something like the right place.  But it’s never an attempt to replicate from a photo, just to aim for the main characteristics.  It is so fluid that you need to adapt to what happens and work on balancing the composition around that.)

… As well as softening edges I had to keep some hard ones carefully preserved.
Next (get on with it!) I mixed some thicker paint onto my brush – a large squirrel mop – to get a darker tone and went in quite dark for the main large bulks of cloud.  The brush moves very quickly, so you get bits of dry-brush effect where the paper was not wetted by previous marks.  In fact I try to leave the paper dry where some of the darkest paint is going to go – don’t want it diluting into already wet paper, or running uncontrollably (it’s a mix of running, and not that I’m after).  This also meant that a big chunk of the dark cloud on the right would be hard edged, particularly against the white paper on top – one of the main planned-in-advance aspects of this sky .  I tried to vary the cloud colour a bit as I went, with warmer and cooler tints in places to give an idea of the light effect.  I think it could have benefitted from a bit more variation.

Once the main heavy darks are in it just remains to stand back a bit and squint whilst quickly lifting out /softening off some other edges where necessary, and also pulling any slightly pooling bits of paint away with a semi-dry brush, downwards or off the sides of the paper.  Then get the hair dryer on it and see how it has turned out.

When the sky was finished I considered options for what would suit it in terms of a land element; various flat possibilities – Somerset levels, a Norfolk saltmarsh, a Sussex beach, a lighthouse, church towers, trees, etc – before settling on this one. Mainly I thought it needed to give a sense of scale, and not compete with the sky.
The vertical shape of a windmill can fit the bill so often… Well, it was good enough for Seago (and Wesson, Gerald Ackermann, etc).  Incidentally, that’s Blakeney church tower on the right; another visible landmark on this stretch of coast.  On quite a hill, for this area, though I have exaggerated it a bit.

Here’s another, more sunny sky painting I did recently of a small heathland nature reserve in the Chew Valley:

Spring on Knowle Hill, Chew Valley.

Next post I hope to have some finalised news about upcoming painting holiday/workshop/demonstrations.