Clouds

I have more seas I want to paint. But I needed a little cloud interlude, trying different methods. Inspired by Virginia Hein and Gail Wong's book. It's something I've been doing for years, but sometimes, I feel inspired to revisit the subject and find out if I have learned new skills since I last tried! When I search for "cloud" on my blog, I'm finding watercolour musings back to 2017 and even pastel comments in 2012.

Above wet in wet in wet. The paper was quite wet when I started, so things were a bit softer than I wanted. 

Below Wet on wet on dry. I applied the yellow on dry paper, then the dark cloud shadow straight away, so it's a little softer. But as you can see, I used fresh paint for that part, and got a stronger contrast. I painted the blue around everything, so it's a little too much of hard edges.

Ideally I'd like an in-between effect. That said, the paper dried quicker than I expected in the top one, and by the time I was working on the little clouds, the paper was drier than I would have liked. It's like Une Valse à mille temps, you have to keep sharp. And it wasn't even a hot day, there was no sunshine, and I was indoors. And I wasn't working big (the whole thing is on a quarter sheet).

Today would be an easy day for clouds - just a uniform grey from top to bottom! 

Naples Yellow, Moonglow and Cobalt Blue. Naples Yellow is probably too warm for our Irish skies.