Tips for painting skies

• Use upright paper or board rather than a landscape shape.
• Paint the same sky area at different times of the same day.
• Use a much larger flat-headed brush than usual. The corner of the head can be used for detail.
• Paint a landscape that is mainly sky with just a narrow strip of land at the bottom of the composition
• Try to paint a night sky en plein air.
• Use the internet regularly as a source of ideas.
• Try using a different medium.
• Paint large rather than small, using large brushes.
• Use a framing device, even just a rectangle cut out of a blank postcard, to select an area of sky to concentrate on.

BLUE SEASCAPE STEP BY STEP

STAGE ONE

I mixed six strengths of ultramarine blue, from strong to weak. On a stretched piece (see tips below) of dry watercolour paper I painted horizontal bands of colour, starting with the strongest mixture at the top. It is important to work on a tilted surface and to keep the bottom edge of the paint wet as you work back and forward

STAGE TWO

 

While the wash was still wet I used a crumpled tissue to lift out the cloud shapes

 

STAGE THREE

Clouds take light and shadow so I used a mixture of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna to suggest shadows on the underside of the cloud shapes

 

STAGE FOUR FINISHED PAINTING