I’m always being asked by students how they can improve their skies. One of my first reactions is usually “don’t try and put too much in it!” In most circumstances, keeping it simple is the key to success. There is always the danger that an over-active sky will detract from your main area of interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps the simplest way of suggesting a cloudy sky is to lift the cloud-shapes out from the damp wash with a piece of dry tissue. Skies can be painted wet-on-dry, or completely wet-in-wet. Whichever approach you opt for, it’s worth planning it out beforehand. Some of the worst skies I’ve seen suffer from the painter not being familiar with what clouds actually look like. Avoid regularity in size and spacing, and be aware that skies obey the laws of perspective (Nearer clouds are larger and bulkier than those further away, nearer the horizon, which tend to be smaller, and more horizontal in appearance).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Take the time to study skies in detail. Take photographs, make sketches and save them all in a file marked ‘Skies’. The more you observe skies, the more familiar you’ll become with how they work (we take them for granted most of the time). In time, you’ll become more adept at creating original, realistic-looking skies of your own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m always being asked by students how they can improve their skies. One of my first reactions is usually “don’t try and put too much in it!” In most circumstances, keeping it simple is the key to success. There is always the danger that an over-active sky will detract from your main area of interest. Perhaps the simplest way of...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-techniques","category-watercolour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":670,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions\/670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}