Painting Cumulus Clouds in Acrylic - With 10 Tips Checklist
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This is an old video from a class I did...
Skies can be painted in a wet in wet way but also dry brush, a great technique for cumulus skies. And this video has both techniques in it.
If you want to have a go at this I worked on a canvas board with Acrylic paint
PDF download with Hints and Tips can be found HERE...
Kit List:
- Canvas Board
- Acrylic Paint: Titanium White, Cerulean Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Payne’s Grey
- Large Flat Brush
- Round or Filbert Bristle Brushes, Medium and Small
- Filbert Synthetics
- Pencil
Easy Cumulus Skies
- Add a blended background on this sky it is lighter at the base (at the horizon). Don’t worry about it not being perfectly blended. I describe how to blend in this step and also how to create tension within a sky.
- Draw geometric shapes with a pencil as a guide or you can paint direct, remember nature isn’t even!
- Near to the Horizon Clouds are further away so smaller.
- Using a dry brush (with very little white paint and no water) start in the centre of the shape and use circular strokes.
- Allow thin edges, we don’t want perfect coverage anywhere!
- Build it up in layers, add some hard edges where the light hits.
- This is very simplistic you can add colours (imagine a sunset with loads of colour in the clouds) on the underside of the clouds you can add some darker shadows, here I added a little Payne’s Grey and some yellow + white in the highlights.
- Add wispy bits in-between, and create some thinner paint, hardly there clouds in background, join clouds up where it feels right.
The techniques in this video can be transferred to lots of skies and adapted to different mediums too… have a go and post your pics in the Art Hub Facebook Group
Most importantly start to notice skies, how do they differ, I’m adding a Bonus video below which is all about the type of clouds, I love to look up and see the cloud types - enjoy!