Kay Cox said:

Heeellllllllppppp!!!! I tried my first of clouds for the Cloud

Challenge and now I know why I draw people. But I really want to

learn this and promise I will keep trying. At least this time I was

using decent paper. Please check my sorry attempt out at

http://gypsyssketchbook.blogspot.com And then tell me...is it the

media, the composition? Lousy drawing? I was using water color

crayons and Inktense pencils as I was doing while I was on duty at

the gallery. Tell me, tell me. Should I start with something

easier? I am so fascinated by these giant thunderclouds we get here

on the coast and this one was lit from behind by the sun giving it

this beautiful white to yellow edgy. I didn't even come close.

HELP!

And Karen Winters replied:

Hi Kay,

I think you're off to a good start, and I congratulate you for

getting the whole feeling of the landscape!

Since you asked for suggestions, here are a few things you could try

next time if you want to experiment. Keep in mind that the values you

saw may have been different from this, so take that into

consideration. This is an imaginary thunderhead.

Using a brush might be an easier way to get that soft amorphous

feeling without drawing an outlined edge. I would have used a

different medium than you did, watercolor and brush, but that's just

my comfort zone. Thunderheads can have sharp edges on top but when

they're fully backlit by the sun, as in your example, but their

insides are very dark, and that darkness is cast onto the land.

this web picture shows that hi contrast ...

http://www.whitefishbaycamp.com/2000pics/pic4.jpg

Here's a quick and dirty example using only blue and payne's gray of

how increasing the contrast might help, and also how you can let the

brush and paint do their thing to suggest the interior edges of

clouds without drawing them.

http://karenwinters.com/blogimages/thunderhead-example.jpg

To enhance the contrast of the sun peeking out work, you need to

darken what's on both sides of it. That means darken the sky

considerably, and darken the shadow side of the thunderhead. I do

this by painting the interior of the thunderhead with dark colors of

blue and purple and payne's gray, for example, and then painting the

sky right up to the edge of the cloud, leaving just a sliver of pure

white. You need contrast to show a glow. It's OK to exaggerate in a

painting, too, for dramatic effect! What you want to capture is your

emotional response to the scene, it doesn't have to be literal. If I

had been doing this "for real" I would have added more colors to the

clouds, reflecting the colors of the landscape.

I wouldn't draw anything ahead of time, I'd do it all with the brush.

While the dark cloud form was still wet, I'd blot out some of the

paint to create other shapes, and even drop some clear water in to

make backruns of shapes. When the paint was fully dry, I'd go back

and add just a touch of warm color in the area where the sun was

coming through. Darkening the foreground which is in the shadow of

the thunderhead will also help the illusion of its density.

Here's a cloud painting done in the last year or so. They aren't

thunderheads (they're fair weather cumulus) but you can sort of get

the idea of how the brush loosely models the contours of the clouds.

As you can tell from the direction of the shadows they're side-lit,

not backlit, so that's a difference, too.

http://karenwinters.com/kblog/2006/07/02/some-clouds/

Now that it's summer in So. Cal we hardly get any clouds - and I miss

them! I hope this helps some or gives you some new things to think

about the next time you paint some. Keep painting!

Karen

http://www.karensblog.com