From the course: Painting Foundations: Acrylic

Landscape techniques: Painting clouds using color strings

From the course: Painting Foundations: Acrylic

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Landscape techniques: Painting clouds using color strings

“

- And then with the white, make it into more of a watery wash. And I just add a tiny, little bit of the yellow. A tiny, little bit of the red. It just gives this nice, warm glaze. And what I'm going to do with this, is just look for the lightest areas on the cloud, and just slightly wash it into the-- we might still be painting over these areas, but this will just give you a base for the painting. OK and just dipping it into a little bit of water, so you get a nice flow with the brush. And notice how with the brush, it's not really coming off of the canvas very much. I'm just scrubbing it into the canvas. So I'm not trying to get it on super thick cause I quite like it when I've got this warmth coming through from underneath. And notice how I'm keeping the shapes of the white to mirror the image, so it isn't a solid block of white, but it's a pattern that's within the clouds. Here I'm mixing a slightly warmer color to give that glow near the horizon line. So now I have to swap to the filbert brush, and I'm just taking the top string that we've made. Don't feel that you have to block it in completely. I like leaving elements of the color ground shining through. It just really helps at a movement into the actual painting, and moves your eye around the painting and adds an interest to it. So I'm varying the shade and the tone. If I paint it thinner here, I get more warmth from the underpainting. If I paint it thicker, it goes cooler and more gray. Then just jump down to the next color string. Just dipping the paint into water, so it has the warmth coming through from underneath. but still keeps that nice tone. Then we can jump to the final tonal string. When I'm working with this final tone, I'm applying it quite softly, my brush is only just touching the canvas surface and by painting the same tone on the building in the foreground, I help to keep the color harmony throughout. This keeps the whole piece consistent, bringing the same color down to the distant sea. So I've got dashes of the same color in the sea, in the foreground, and in the sky. Here for the foreground area of the sea, you can jump back to your first string that you had. It's got that nice dark tone to it. (brush swirling in glass) So you can start to see from having these three tonal strings, the painting's really coming together quite simply as we just built it up just looking at the tones that are within the painting. Now what I can start to do is bring in some brighter blues to put into the sky. Bring in some of the warm colors in the greens in the foreground, and this little study will come together really nicely. Just put some more of that dark onto this building. OK, that's great.

Contents