How to Paint Clouds Using Acrylics | Part 1

so first things first we're gonna do the background and this is phthalocyanine blue you can use any brand of paint really if you know what you're doing you can get the same effect with any brand so even these these cheaper basics will work fine you don't have to have the goldens or anything like that it might be a little creamier and easier but this will be fine if you are you know on a budget or just starting out this is titanium white and the phthalo cyan I'm blue and titanium white just these two colors together are gonna give us a nice bright blue background that we can lay our clouds on so that's all we're gonna need for this part of the painting this is a slow dry blending aid by liquitex you can use this slow dry blending medium or a flow aid along with water and these in combination when mixing your colors will that drying process and will allow you to blend much easier which will help with the background and then also on the edges of the clouds to soften them up having a drying retardent really helps so to start out we're just gonna get a little water on our blending brush add a little bit of the retardant and you just have to get a feel for this if you add too much retardant and it's super thin and watery then drag more paint in if it's too thick and creamy then add more retardant so just get a feel for it and then mix your blue and your white to get a nice bright blue like this just a nice sky blue if you want to buy a premix that's fine but I prefer to blend my own color so I can get it exactly how I want it I think as you get more experienced you'll prefer that also and then we're just gonna lay the color on don't worry about brushstrokes so we're just trying to cover the entire canvas right now just make sure you have plenty of paint we want it to be somewhat thick and wet during this entire process because it's important to get a nice good background that looks soft and uniform so near the bottom add more white brighten up that blue add more white and that's gonna give us a more natural effect because usually near the horizon or lower towards the earth it's a bit brighter and then it deepens in blue as it gets above the horizon so if you want to add a little more white at the bottom it will make for a more natural background here I'm adding some pure white at the bottom just to make sure we get that bright haze near the earth and that's gonna give us depth and you'll see that come into play later on in the painting as we try to add depth I'm just working it in getting it even and getting it the way I want it so just do the same here you try to get that white haze at the bottom and just step back now and then when you're doing this and take a look at it and add white where you need to okay now this is a two inch dry square brush the bristles have to be dry so no water no flow aid and just lightly brush the entire painting once you have the paint apply the way that you want it to be applied I have a tutorial video showing exactly how to do this on blending backgrounds so you can take a peek at that if you want but all I'm doing is just back and forth figure Eight's and back and forth really soft with a dry square brush like this and what this does is softens that background gets rid of the brushstrokes and makes everything look uniform and natural just scraping off some of the some of the paint trying to keep the bristles clean now I'm just switching it out for a 3-inch same thing dry bristles and we're just gonna go over that lightly again and by doubling up you really make sure to soften that background and it'll look it'll look really nice and uniform and beautiful for you so now at this point the background is where we want it so now I'm gonna get a little bit of Mars black this is a different brand Windsor and Newton and like I said it doesn't really matter if you know what you're doing and I'm just going to add a little dab of black just to get a light gray so we're gonna use that black with the titanium white and this is a filbert brush a filbert brush is just a flat brush with a rounded tip and this is a good brush for blending and scrubbing in initial layers of color and we're gonna mix that white and black to give us a soft gray just to get the bottoms of the clouds and the underbelly of the clouds so same as before I was just a little dip in the water and the flow ate just to help us blend the reason we're using that is because acrylics dry very fast so that's why people use oil paints it's because it stays wet for a long time and it's easier to blend so this allows us to get that bright pop of acrylic paint but also get the blending benefits of oils so I'm just getting a light gray you don't want it too dark at least not in this particular painting with a clear blue sky it's gonna be bright white clouds with they're just a soft gray on the bottom and then here we're just mapping out the bottoms of the clouds and when you're doing this when if you want to add depth you want the clouds near the top of the painting your main clouds to be larger and you're gonna see more of the gray bottoms because you'll be looking more directly up at them and then as you drop down towards that whiter horizon you will see the sides of the clouds more so it will just be a thin strip of grey at the bottom and you'll see that coming to play but think about perspective and depth when you're doing this but right now we're just mapping out our main clouds and adding this gray will set in the bottom and the main bulk of those clouds and then we'll add white around the edges to brighten them up so here how it's thinner strips of grey because these clouds are gonna be off in the distance as opposed to the two bodies of clouds that I just added that we'll be looking up at so I'm just rinsing it now that's just water getting all the gray out now the same thing just a little bit of flow aid and dry retardant and water still using the filbert brush and now you can start working in the bright white and we're gonna use this white to work around the gray and add the bright backlit edges of the clouds and this is what's going to bring it to life and you don't want a defined line between the gray and the white you want it softly blended together so kind of work the edges of the gray there and try to blend that white and gray together on those edges as you're doing this and just kind of surround the gray and leave it a little thinner on the bottom part and then you drag that white out more on the top part if you want to add depth and here you can kind of pull that white out make it look kinda wispy and blown in the wind a bit and just try to make all your edges soft by soft I mean well blended you don't want harsh defined edges when you're when you're painting clouds that will give it a cartoony unnatural look so blending is kind of key in these these clouds then here it's gonna be a similar thing but with these distant clouds it's all gonna be thinner smaller and you're not gonna drag that white out as much on top and that will set those clouds back in the horizon more because we're getting more of a side profile view of those as opposed to a bottom-up view of those main two clouds that are closer and larger and those little subtleties will really help with perspective and depth and it will make it look natural and when you're doing this initial layer just think of blending and mapping you're kind of mapping out the shapes of the clouds and just try to soften and blend everything in well and then as you add another layer to you can brighten up certain spots and make some changes and things like that but just really try to blend these out well and map it out well to where it makes sense dimensionally but it doesn't have to look perfect on this first layer this is all just kind of concept and getting things laid out and it's kind of tedious but just keep working it in and blending it and we're just adding more white and we're gonna drag out the tops of these mein closer clouds that we're looking up at and by adding this size and brightness and dimension we're gonna set ourselves underneath those and we'll set those smaller more profiled sideview clouds back in the distance and give us that depth that we want so just same thing mapping and blending and dragging out those tops and try to make it you know kind of wispy and just thin and light here on the tops the base of those clouds will be thick and the tops pool kind of be lit up and blended and wispy that'll make it look natural as we add some more color so now this is the scrub blender brush it's a smaller blender and it's gonna stiffer bristles it's just a scrub brush but same thing get some get some retardant and some blending aid and a little bit of water just find that little balance which you will and just get everything blended out all those edges we don't want any defined edges everything has got to be soft so it's a little tedious but it's it's worth it and just soften all those edges up this little scrub brush is great for that and I'll put links to all these different brushes and paint colors and the canvas panel everything in the description so you can use exactly what I'm using here and follow these and create this exact painting if you want to so now I'm just grabbing more color I'm still having the scrub brush and now I'm gonna add a little bit of brightness here into these main clouds while everything's wet and then once we get it mapped out blended well and our initial layers in then we'll let that layer dry and we'll add another layer and I'll show that in the second video so here I'm just kind of working that edge of the gray same thing so just kind of going around that gray base that we set in blending in those edges and just adding some more color and brightness and white try not to leave any hard edges so this is kind of wrapping up the first part of this painting we're at about 20 minutes and I think YouTube kind of penalize you if you go over 20 minutes on their algorithm so I'm going to break this up into two parts let's wrap this one up and then in the second part we'll add some more layers add some more brightness really blend everything out and finish it up you

Channel: Greg Lowman Art

Views: 83,277

Keywords: greg lowman, greg lowman art, how to paint, acrylic painting tutorial, how to paint using acrylics, clouds, sky, how to paint clouds, cloud painting, acrylic cloud painting, how to paint acrylic clouds, how to paint clouds using acrylics, how to paint clouds using acrylic paint, how to paint clouds in acrylic, acrylic cloud painting tutorial, painting instructions, Painting clouds with acrylics, how to paint realistic clouds, painting realistic clouds, painting tutorial

Id: 7fWa0xP1zxw

Length: 19min 39sec (1179 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 20 2019