030 The Augusta Railway - Test Painting Clouds

We have learned our strokes on the previous test board.  Now we need to try painting against a sky test board.  Here we go!

We start with the blended sky test board that I made about a week ago.  I put it on an aluminum easel.

I'll be using Liquitex Acrylic white, a large brush and a small pallet.

Not seen, but Taylor, who is helping by taking the photos, has gone to wet a rag and fill up the water glass.

Let's start with a cloud.  On my Painting Clouds page, I posted a bunch of cloud painting techniques that I liked or was using.   Of all of these I liked Tim Gagnon's Acrylic Painting - Simple Clouds video the best.  This technique gave me the cloud that looked the most like one from the cotton fields of South Georgia.  It is also very easy and doesn't require a lot of other colors other than white.  I started with a heavier cloud.

One thing I've learned is that you can't do this with a very dry brush.  So I erased the cloud with a wet rag, and will start over with a slightly damp brush.

Loading the brush I start with a cloud ball and "scrub" the white out of the brush so that the sky color comes through the cloud.  Hey, this cloud looks fairly good!  I need a much bigger, rounder brush, so I pulled the largest one I had out of the drawer.

The second cloud I want to make appear further back in the sky and slightly wind swept from left to right.

Even further back in the horizon I wanted some tiny, wind broken clouds gathering up as they move left to right in the sky.

Some more clouds in the horizon blend with the haze of the hot Georgia summer.  We've not had rain in a month around here.  Most of the clouds are just sight seeing.

I filled in the larger clouds a bit more with some paint.  Letting the paint dry thoroughly is critical before adding more on, I found out.

Let's try a much bigger cloud in the upper left hand corner, looking as if it was coming right over our heads.  First, I scrub in some white.

I spread the white out as much as possible, then come back with a loaded brush and filled in the cloud in the middle so that the blue would not show through.

Next I came in with just a tiny bit of gray and some white, and put some shadow in the bottom of the cloud.  It worked out nicely!

I continued to work the big cloud, and made some very tiny streaks of cloud using the gray tinted brush.

Here's how it looked when I finished.  I'm not jumping for joy at my work, but I am pleased enough to say in the words of my idol Allen McClelland..."that is good enough!" and will prepare to paint the backdrop!