Skies. The Variety and Beauty.

 Good day fellow Creatives! Today I am going to go over the making of watercolor skies. I don't often do landscapes because my skies always look wrong. 

Unfortunately mine are rarely beautiful or varied.  I mentioned to my fellow watercolorist, Brenda that my skies are usually formed with blue paint and a tissue I fished out from my pocket during hay fever season.  She's happy to be my friend.  Visuals.  That is a technical term.  It will be obvious what I mean with some examples of my previous sky artistry.  Let the humiliation begin.  It can only get better.

I present to you Wrinkle Man.  God help me.  He is my primo example of blue paint and snot tissue method.  To our right we have Mr Adorable himself backed by the sad and second favorite sky method. The blue purple blob method. Heavens to Betsy. Not a cloud in the sky when he is around.

 

   So, you can see why I am all excited to try to improve the skies of my watercolors.

But let us not dwell on the past.  We have a possible solution!  Here are the samples the DWS artist amde for us during the meeting and an additional 4 more he did on the backside of the demo sheet before the meeting (he gave me the demo sheet.  He sensed I needed it.) 

Yes.  They are good.  

With my normal caveats of I am a beginner and blah blah blah, here are my attempts at sky making SINCE the demo.  Sue, my fellow creative, has also been working on their skies this week.  We will see how things went for her in a minute. For now feast your eyes on mine:

 

I named each of them and explainerized some.  I think you will agree.  You will have to click on them to see.  The weird lines one was my attempt at the sunrise I saw this morning.  Apparently I live in Candyland.  The top right was my quasi attempt at melding the top 2 samples from the artist. It came out looking like dystopia. I am OK with the bottom two skies.  The landscapes are an abomination and hurt my eyes.

OK the next four:

I got slightly better with two of them.  I think the top left and bottom right are a small step forward.  The Cormac McCarthy red splash is my favorite. I am sure he will contact me to doodle up is next cover.  Clearly there is an element of the demented. The bottom left I was trying for the artist top right sample.  Instead it looks like something one would see under a microscope and then run for the containment booth for a scrub.  Can't win them all.

 I think I discovered one of my problems.  It is in my mind's eye.  I have trouble painting in blue "background" leaving in the actual paper background as the foreground clouds.  Not sure that makes sense.  Even when I was watching the demo my mind was going sideways.  I think it's in the same problem of sewing a complicated bag.  I have to shut off my mind when putting in loops, pockets or handles.  I have to follow directions that feel wrong to me. I get the same disconcerted feeling painting clouds and sky.  It's backwards.

If you look closely at the artist's demo you will see red splashes.  That's not him.  That was me losing my mind and splashing red on the one I labeled Cormac McCarthy sky. Blood Meridian more like.

 

Another hurdle is my frugality. I cannot waste paint.  This was my water after I did that first hideous sky where the land comes up to meet the sky.  Oh, the land was originally about an inch high.  But the sky was green so... yeah.  The demo artist blows through paint.  It distracted me wildly.

OK on to Sue who has more experience with skies.  She is used to painting with oils and acrylics which she tells me is a more straightforward affair when sky painting.  So I think she suffers from backward thinking too.  I will have to ask her. 

OK, clearly she has her sky act together and her landscape looks nice.  Notice the gray in the left one above?  Nice.  I think I like the sky in the top right is better.  I think its the bleed and the clouds look more realistic. Nice Sue.

Her next two (above). I recognize what she was going for on top left. It is the lower lefts of the artist's sample.  She did well don't you agree?  It's harder than it looks.  She tries with the gray.  At this point she is showing off with the landscape portions of her paintings.  I will ignore that.  I also recognize her trying to go for that loose landscape we both marveled over in the sample painting.  Well done on that Sue.  IRL it looks like a tornado is touching down (painting on right).  I'm glad she really went for it with the violet.

Thank you Sue for letting me use your skies. 

If you have any thoughts, share them.  We are open to suggestions. 

Next, I am going to try to take off a shadow from a painting I made that I like... if not for the shadow. It will be a new technique since the stain aint comin off!