Watercolor Skies & Clouds
Learn to paint skies with soft wet-into-wet effects by a slow development of multiple layers. The method you will learn in this course allows more control, without overworking. Then practice your new skills in context as you complete two dramatic watercolor sky paintings.
What Will I Learn?
- how to use multiple washes to deal with one difficulty at a time, without overworking
- how to keep your skies looking fresh and luminous, while keeping more control over over placement, colors and values
- how to paint complex soft skies and clouds in layers so you can have more control—and calm—than the traditional way of doing the sky in one session
Is This Course Right for Me?
This course is for watercolor painters with some experience working at quarter-sheet size or larger. You MUST stretch your paper and work at least quarter-sheet or larger to have a good learning experience with the techniques in this course.
The process used in this course is NOT suitable for
- unstretched paper
- blocks
- plein air painting
- student-grade paper (paper that is not 100% cotton)
Course Content
Preliminaries
Project 1 — Crescent Moon in a Pre-Dawn Sky
- Project 1 Overview & Handouts
- How and Why to Stretch Your Watercolor Paper
- How to Mix Watercolor Washes for Larger Areas
- How to Print Photos and Templates Poster-Size (Using Adobe Acrobat)
- How to Resize Rectangles Proportionally (with no calculating)
- A Less-Messy Way to Spatter Watercolor Paint and Masking Fluid
- Three Ways to Mask a Crescent Moon
- Project 1 Design and Planning
- Project 1 Paint-Along
- Working With Reference Photos for Skies
Project 2 — Dramatic Clouds at the Beach
- Project 2 Overview & Handouts
- Color Mixing for Skies and Clouds in Watercolor (Daytime Skies)
- Three Ways to Create Clouds in Watercolor by Lifting
- Working on Saturated Paper to Practice Wet-into-Wet Techniques
- Painting Dark Clouds on a Lighter-Value Sky
- Using Multiple Washes to Create Clouds Layers
- Painting Light Clouds on a Darker-Value Sky Using Negative Painting Wet-Into-Wet
- Preserving Soft-Edged Highlights with a Gum Arabic Resist
- Project 2 Design and Planning
- Project 2 Paint-Along