Cloudbusting, Big Skies

Having finally seen some blue skies and gorgeous clouds at sunset, it's time to think about clouds and what kind of role they play in my paintings. 

When I started painting landscapes, sky was there! Best avoided really and when possible so much motif that it only peeked out between grasses and trees, there but well not really present. With the years this has slowly started to change and at the moment I,m having a bit of a cloud busting session! 

Clouds are tricky as they aren’t flat, they are light and fluffy and three dimensional. They also aren’t necessarily white.  

Here as you can see there is no white, the setting sun is shining from the back and as a result the parts of the clouds that are nearer to us are the darkest values. 

I've spent a lot of time watching the movements and changes of light and am slowly feeling a bit more confident about tackling ''a big sky'', in the meantime I'll be watching those pink clouds scudding across that blue sky, at least until we're back to grey!