Puffy cumulus clouds are my favorite and they are relatively easy to paint. The very blue and dark sample above is a detail of a baseball poster called Screaming Eagle. It demonstrates a simple and fast technique for painting believable clouds.

• First step requires a pencil under-drawing to establish the shadows or dark areas of the cloud forms. In this case I also darkened the sky area around the cloud to create a basic silhouette.

• The graphite was fixed to the canvas by airbrushing Liquitex Matte Medium over it, so it does not turn to gray mud in the next step.

• A series of transparent washes (about 6) were applied with a wide house painting brush to unify the clouds with the sky background and build value contrast by darkening just the sky around the cloud. This can be done quickly with a big brush and switching to a smaller brush for the crannies while the paint is still wet.  I was mostly interested in making the sky look right.

• The last step involves building up the light parts of the cloud to give it volume, with thin washes of cool colors in the shadows and warmer colors on the lit side. The highlights were added to the top ridges of the canvas threads with an almost dry brush. Since I wanted the clouds to appear distant in perspective I did not lighten them to white. You can see drips and the pencil work through the paint.

This is a cloud detail of Wispy on canvasboard. I applied loose blue washes with broad dynamic strokes developing the sky color and then over-painted the lights following the streaks of the under-painting. The light colors were applied using very thin mixtures of pigment with washes and stipple techniques to create the soft transparent look.

The sky would not be so exciting or add as much spice to our vistas without clouds. They seem to come in every imaginable shape, size and color, providing abundant inspiration to imitate nature’s beauty. Clouds add drama to a composition. Many artists have used them over the centuries and I am no exception. Where I usually employ them as a secondary element to enhance a design, I decided it would be exciting to do a series of cloud paintings for their own sake. All of them will be designed as small 8x10 presentations at the beginning of the series and probably get much larger over time. I have some reference pictures of clouds, which may inspire me to paint, but I find myself painting from mind. Instead of relying on photographs I am fascinated with what my visual memory of skies will produce. I will concentrate on interpretation and stylistic expression to make more interesting paintings.

When I think about it, I spend many hours studying clouds, mostly in awe and wonder, trying to take mental snapshots that would be cool to paint at a later time. I observe that clouds have no hard edges no matter how crisp they may look in silhouette, and the interior shapes are also soft, which makes them a challenge to paint with a brush. Transparent cirrus clouds are the most difficult for me and seem to take the most time.

I always want to choose a special set of conditions for each painting, something not often seen or painted, perhaps a rare natural event. I’ve always been mesmerized by the way moonlight makes clouds glow as they move across the sky, so I was compelled to try doing at least one night scene like this. Most of my energy went into rendering the glow around the edges of the clouds in front of the moon. I might make a similar piece in orange and black for the fall season.

Lightning and tornados are on my radar. They are so super-natural and represent so much power, that I am planning to work on a of few of them, but I’m not sure if people will want to buy them because they are also horrific. Of course there is always the majesty of massive thunderheads best seen as a weather front is moving in. The colors change a lot as the formations brew. The contrast between dark ominous clouds and the brilliant whites in direct sun are quite striking.

In this detail of Peekaboo, depth of scale was achieved by contrasting different sizes of clouds overlapping in different colors. It started out as a abstract series of washes using paint leftover from the previous piece. The next day when I studied the Rorschach result, it made me think of a shaft of sunlight streaming through a narrow opening.

Last week I was headed for bed when the sun was coming up in a glorious display of long yellow cloud streaks all emanating from the horizon. I did a quick sketch from the window and hope to paint that one soon. I am collecting a whole bunch of drawings to explore design and settings, so many that I probably will not be able to paint them all. The California sky presents many amazing clouds to feed my painting habit and I will continue trying to do them justice in acrylics. I will leave you with a sunset