Simple & Effective Techniques for Painting Clouds

hi everyone welcome to the Janssen art studio I'm David Janssen welcome to a series where actually we're going to do several DVDs upon painting cause this is the first one they're some simple painting techniques for clouds and I've always wanted to do this but I don't know quite how to approach a DVD like this I've been thinking about it actually for a couple of years been doing a lot of cloud studies some of you that have followed me on my blog and follow me on Facebook and stuff have seen some of the beautiful pictures of clouds that I've taken from around the world in the last couple of years I post them up there and we discussed them just a little bit but artists the problem is you have so many generations of artists that capture clouds so differently and you know what is it that I like to paint I'm not really sure I've paint everything from you know simple canal boat puffy little clouds folk art clouds to in depth clouds to studying a Bierstadt and Lewis asked tonight we've done several of his Thomas Moran you know John Constable I mean I've looked at all of these beautiful painters and they all develop a technique and they all develop clouds and paintings a little differently so how do we go about approaching this the thing is what I have to do is to teach you how to see a cloud and then as you start to study other artists and other techniques is to learn not how are they seeing that cloud and how are they capturing that cloud as pollen is the visual effect within your painting okay so we're going to take a look at quite a few concepts in this DVD and then we're going to look at some simple things two simple techniques you can use to capture some of these effects okay and we'll look at some of the philosophies behind some of these different techniques but there is so many that we just cannot do it all within the two and a half hours of this video we'll try to stretch it to three as much as we can to get in to this particular DVD so when we're going to start our study of clouds you know what do we do first we learn how to see a clown would go back and take a look at through history and I thought about that and I'm going to take you back first take your look through history then we'll go in to seeing what is a cloud some of the different types of clouds how's it goes how to see a cloud and then we're going to have to talk about linear perspective perspective within the cloud so they're so important and then we'll start to show some of the different techniques now the problem is with presenting it in any way that I have thought about presenting this is that by the time you get to the end of the DVD you're going to see stuff that you're going to have to go back and watch this again because you'll see things a little different and you'll see my discussion is different so I highly suggest that you watch this several times okay I'll try not to be boring but we'll watch this several times because each time you see it and as your eye becomes attuned to seeing more and more and more as you go back and watch it again you're going to see more and your eye will see more and you'll understand better so you're going to have to watch this several times okay let's go back first let's go back into history let's take a look at just a couple artists I don't want to over wall you with lots of them because I've painted lots of them we'll look at just a couple because we're going to look at some simple techniques we'll look at just a couple that are very influential and then we'll take a look at some clouds okay first what I want to do is I'm going to take you back and I'm going to take you back over to the Netherlands and I'm going to take you I went over to the Netherlands and went through all the museums all throughout Europe events and many as in museums right now and one painter that you know styles of painters the Dutch the Dutch masters really stand out and Van rice dal really really stands out and he does a lot of different paintings and I saw this original over in Europe and the thing that philosophy about the Dutch and here's got these magnificent clouds and one of the things that I just want to open your eyes to start to look at about clouds in the painting is the philosophy about the application of clouds and in here and particular painting when you're looking at van Russell you'll see that the horizon line is lower okay the horizon line is lower across the bottom of the painting here so two-thirds a good two thirds of the even a little bit more than that of the painting is in sky and the lower third of it here is and is in the land and so in the Dutch philosophy was that the sky was the most important part of the painting and they were a small flat in there a small country very very flat and so they didn't have magnificent mountains like you see bierstadt and Thomas ransoms each other's painting and so they would they would painted the land very small and the sky the Magnificent sky so big and when I was over there I took hundreds of photos of clouds and sun rays coming through that were magnificent absolutely magnificent and the skies were magnificent why because the land is so flat and so you get these maybe disguise and to portray that the artist created a tremendous amount of interest within the sky and there and a little bit less interest within the ground and they have something that we're going to be pointing out in several of thinks he has a journey past here between look how big and wide this cloud is right through here and then how it narrows down it comes back to this visual point his vanishing point in his painting is way back here and his visual journey is taking it this way and these clouds are all narrowing down and pointing to this visual journey where everything is taking you back here we're going to talk about that I'm going to do a special little section in here called perspective you want to show you that you can use clouds to help you have a visual perspective we'll talk about that but Wren rice all you look at this you have these these beautiful now this is an evening set here you have the light source coming out from the left here and you see the light to the shadow expressed here on the wind meal and it's expressed also into the cloud that's here here's the light side and here's the shadow side of the cloud here's the light side and here's the shadow at the club so clouds are going to carry light sources and everything exactly the same as objects within a landscape depending upon the position of the Sun you notice is is going to show how much you're going to see it this is a little bit more towards the evening time and so the Sun the light would be expressed a little bit stronger and we'll talk a little bit about that is where you're going but the Ducks one thing I want to show you about the Ducks is to have these magnificent powerful skies and part of that is because of the philosophies and once they do their painting this is another Dutch painter here and again look at the visual journey and the clouds of this artist sets up look at the powerful darks use of light and dark within the cloud here and look at the dark cloud sitting in front of the light class here and that was opposite of me when I was first started painting and learning I always learned that dark objects go back light objects go front and so it never seemed possible for me to put a dark cloud in front of a light clock as we go through this DVD and I show you all these pictures I want you to to dispel that in your mind right now I want you to look at how many times in nature you see a dark cloud right in front of a light clock it happens over half the time so you know that's something that you're going to have to paint so when I go when I first started painting I always put puffy white clouds dark clouds in the back and white white white clouds in the front that doesn't always happen and so we need to look at that but again here is a lower landscape part the land here is lower the sky occupies at least two-thirds if not more of the painting here and so it's more so it's actually almost a quarter of or three-quarters of the painting this all sky on this one here and look at the visual journey look at the positions of dark clouds up in front of lights the cloud even the darkest cloud that's here has a light side and a dark side so even the dark one in front of it has a lighter shot side and a shadow side to it and look at the light side and the dark side through the cloud so the light look at these each individual areas of life the cloud and the dark side of the clock they're magnificent okay so the Ducks would put a lot into the into the sky a lot of the interesting stuff into the sky because that's basically you know what showed up most into into their landscapes because their land was very small very quiet bierstadt Albert Bierstadt now we studied him and run the landscape series and I loved him now as you move from the Dutch masters of the Golden Age and all of the ducks we'll talk a little bit about some of the techniques that they would use there but they would do wet in the wet and glazes and many layers and in their in their techniques and I've studied them up close and have some beautiful photos of some of their techniques that they use and they would put so many layers into those clouds I mean they're they're so very realistic so the Dutch masters would use a technique a layering type of technique then as you get into the XA the middle or early part of the 19th century along comes another it's just at the beginning of the impressionistic period there's a whole group of painters called the Hudson River School painters that start out on the middle part of the 1850s and so and go all the way up past the turn of the century and also the pre-raphaelites are going in at the same time each of them have a little bit different philosophy about painting but one of them that stands out the most Hudson River painter but he also had some pre some things are doing towards pre rup Alex where you're expressing the powerful part of nature comes along as Albert Bierstadt which we've studied him before beer status is amazing and so in many of his paintings and there's lots and lots of his paintings out on the internet and stuff you can go look at his paintings are beautiful I want to teach you how to look at them okay so here is one beautiful mountains nice triangle shape path you know going back his visual journey taking you into just to the center right of the painting way in the back back here he puts horizontal instead of using his clouds here as visual journeys like Van rice doll bid instead he's put in this horizontal pass across the clouds this way here taking in which takes you horizontally across the painting the mountains have such a beautiful triangle of interest to take you all the way back here to the back but yet the clouds take your side to side and so he's not really putting in that much of a visual journey but he does have this beautiful sky up into the top corner he has this magnificent late afternoon early evening painting here where he has white luminosity to the edges of the clouds right up here at the top there's this beautiful luminosity to it okay sunrise coming through a sunrays coming through it up at the very top you can actually see a little bit of the Sun you can see the light diminishing as it goes back to the back you have this wonderful play of lights and darks and warms and cools into the clouds so here you will have up in here into this center area here you have the center light and then objects are going darker as they go out on away from each area there so the light is coming right into here so visually that he has an interest into the cloud area then he also has a visual journey that's taken you into the back here but the visual journey through the clouds is softer than the visual journey into the ground and so your eye tends to go to that ground a little bit a little bit left but here he's using clouds they're powerful but the expressions of light and dark and warm and cool are a lot softer than what we just saw and then rice dogs painting orgasm now that doesn't mean bear set paints that way Bierstadt does both I'll show you but it's he uses both he uses his clouds to set a beautiful expression into his painting and this is one this is one artist that I want you to study you really want to see how to use clouds in your paintings okay here's another one evening seen beautiful look at the the luminosity he's painting the clouds for luminosity he is using a Hudson River technique of painting the clouds and in the Hudson River technique where the painting met the belief was if it's an afternoon sky that you would start with a light glaze of yellow evening skies and morning sky start with the light glaze of reds colors but the yellow and the red were used as under glazing under painting into into the painting itself unless you're showing this the Sun itself into the painting then you would do more of an yells and here he's showing the Sun into that so he does this beautiful under glazing and then these glazes of warm reds and purples and purples and violets into here that are cool and he plays his purples against his yellows his warm oranges and yellows and the these are just lightly kissed to the top of the violet colors and that's what creating this luminosity and they use this also when setting their trees and everything it's a beautiful technique done by the Hudson River painters and in Bierstadt especially where they're just using the edges of the clouds to help grab and put it in the real warm right up against a real cool and it gives this will Sparkle woman awesome it's a beautiful set of clouds and again here's his visual journey here's his triangle coming down through here like this right back to his light sources it's amazing this is another one his when he was painting over in Europe and this is where his clouds and of course over here I don't know what it is about Europe when you're over there but they tend to drop that that land line way down skyline way a beautiful application of lights and darks here the Sun is coming through a set in a hole in the sky really lighting up back here dark clouds up into the into the side over here very much like a moran or something you know he's very powerful like a moran renders this all the time in some of my last paintings that i did the approaching storm and stuff you'll see me all paints very dramatic skies with a use of light and dark like Moran and some of the other artists will do but here you have dark clouds coming right in front of my clock and they're using of the light and dark clouds themselves to catch some of these you know very stark areas of interest or you you know you have this wool bright bright color here it grabs your interest but that sky is almost as interesting it's very very interesting painting and so he would penis sky like this and then you turn around and he'll paint the sky like this and I love this the Falls at st. Andrews I love this painting and it's some day I'm going to recreate this with you because I absolutely love this painting to you baby it's a magnificent painting and some of his paintings are so huge and you go down to the National Gallery in washing Washington DC they are huge I mean some of them are 8 10 feet across 12 feet across they're beautiful but Falls of st. Andrews here I want to do this sometime here in sky is kept more simplistic very high Stratus little stratus clouds up here just all broken up and stuff and most of the interest stays down here in the fall into the Falls and notice this time now the ground line is pushed up quite a bit higher okay it's higher into the painting that's up over halfway and so the sky is softened out so the sky doesn't have as much interest in it it's softened out the expression is drawn lower into the painting here lower into the painting so it's more about the water the movement of water and the Falls itself and so the sky does not need the disguise needs to be a simple slightly interesting backdrop for the painting itself okay now here's another one of his dramatic now this is where he gets more into pre Raphael like tight feelings and stuff and he believed in both you know both of you know feeling and sometimes I mean there was a real dichotomy is like he'd take some of this and put this powerful godly movement into his painting and in many times and look at some of these store but there's one day afternoon storm he has this this beautiful movement in there and many times he was and he was ridiculed for that for putting too much you know the feeling of that but it gives this beautiful power getting to a delight you can feel coming right through this hole into the cloud and the light side of it and the shadow side of it and so you've got these other little bits of light here which I don't on this particular painting don't really understand I know the light is right back up over here you see it diminishing through the sky and you see the light coming back down through here and the shadow coming back down through here I do not understand the light in this way now there's the top of a mountain I understand that it's getting lit up but where is this light coming from here and the only thing that could possibly make this happen if where your eye is drawn into here and and the light coming down through here but the actual light that he is looking at expressing is way in the upper-left way back here so the light is pushing through this over here it's hitting this right here but it's up and it's hitting some of this right into here and that's the only thing and that does fit with a little bit like the dark but not this one here and this is where you know you're sitting there and you're thinking about okay there's light sources it's when I look at it it's a little confusing my eyes jumping back and forth between it doesn't have a real good flow to it but yeah it's a very very powerful painting and a very interesting painting into it and so sometimes you can get when you're painting something like this you can get so confused with your life that if you don't give the viewer a little clear indication of here's my light and here's my dark and here's my life path moving through my painting you can set up kind of a confusing area so it's beautiful my eye really travels up through here and and it has this light over here which is a softer light but I don't understand that light that that's here where is that light that's casting that and you know that's going to take me a little bit more study or you know I've seen those kinds of situations really I truly have in Nebraska I've seen them and holes in the sky and I've posted some beautiful pictures of those types of situations you know are they are they one that the average person can believe without actually in there it's hard to say so do you paint it well that's that's hard to say - it's more it's a little better sometimes the paint will people believe you know the beer scent does some beautiful beautiful things then we go into a man that is is wonderful and a one that I want you to take a look at he does a lot of cloud studies oppression mystic painter named John Constance and John Constance is a beautiful painter in that he said his technique is extremely impressionist ik and he is uses a lot of textures a lot of bristle brushes and a lot of powerful strokes when he goes and he's developing his painting his technique is just it's amazing and I've looked at his paintings and you know down at the National Gallery and tracked several of them across here across the United States he he really is made to be looked at from you know quite a bit quite a far quite far away you walk up to his paintings and you see none of the colors are flowing together or blending anything you get into a Dutch master and it's almost like they're mopping a little bit here in their soft brush they use soft relator brushes when they paint those clouds so the colors merged together don't really blend but merge together and then painting in multiple layers you get these this real soft velvety soft cut class constable does I say Constantin Constance early it's constable constable John Constable is different in that he's an impressionistic painter okay so constable he comes in and he will put massive strokes of color and then he follows along the lines of the impressionist what to do a lot of optical blending so as an artist you know how you in paint your clouds you're gonna mop them and layer them impressionistic painting if you look at the difference between Van rice dal and bierstadt and constable those those three right there you go study those those will give you some really good ideas as a painter three very very different ways to approach some of the paintings of the class and how clouds can be portrayed in their in your painting so here you have constable painting here and just touches stuff man when we look up close that his his technique it's magnificent you see the actual textures and brush works within his within his painting and sometimes very very soft you can see that dark purpley colors in the grays you can see light coming through magnificent you'll see other parts workers his work is just you know here you have this ultramarine blue sky and these puppy clouds and you see the brush moving in so many different ways and touches and quick dabs and jabs of color especially up into the front up into this area and then a little bit softer as they get further back and when you look at a painting like this and you look at it up close you go oh my gosh and then you step back and the optical blending starts to take effect it's magnificent it's absolutely magnificent and that's my complaint is I go down to the National Gallery I look at some of the Dutch painters and I love their sky and up close they look magnificent and far back they start to this work and blend together we're in the impressionistic and Monet and sub came in and they started to paint more press mystical ow this stroke to have its power and the blending of optics of your eye coming in that's when it really started changed so when you look up close very very close at a constable technique here you can see he's pushing stuff around you can even see in here look at the different directions that he has here into his brush look at his a jab there's this is actually a stab of the brush being pushed down right into this area here a stab and a push of the syrup right into this area here you'll see short strokes you'll see strokes that are slightly curved you'll see strokes that are pulling more lengthwise here you'll see some drag almost like stumbling of some of these yellows right over the blue skies you'll see a quite a few of the different types of techniques and they're all optic techniques sometimes he's applying the color very thin sometimes he's applying the color a little bit thicker so constable has a really great way of viewing things as well okay so what I'd like you to do as you're looking through some of these things of course there's more Thomas Moran and all these others that you should go look at too and how they use disguise but I want you to look at bierstadt I want you to look at bierstadt and I want you to look at constable I want you to look at van lifestyle and you can look at others Lewis - tonight and then his father Daniel Ridgeway night some of those others along that way to help you with it and at the end of the end the lesson and the written lesson I'll put a few artists that you should reference to and start to study but before we need to do that we need to see what is it that's in a cloud how are these guys see in a cloud okay and then they're using different techniques to portray what they're seeing so let's go see what a cloud is how to see a cloud and then we'll get into a few techniques okay so what actually is a cloud let's just take a real quick couple minutes chicks we've got a lot of painting to do okay now these are some pictures that I take and when I'm especially loved to take them when I'm in the breast of my sons place out there it is so flat that you can see clouds from Horizon to Horizon and you can see light Express on them they're fantastic but usually what you want a couple of things about painting clouds and painting skies first off like what you notice up here in the top look at the background of the sky of the cloud which is the sky it is always darker blue at the top lighter at the bottom we know that is a fact because if the horizon line and there's a lot of scientific bits behind it but if the horizon line you're looking through actually through more of the atmosphere and because as you're looking through more the atmosphere there's more water vapor in that atmosphere and the water vapor reflects refracts the light and intensifies the light and actually makes the dark blue of the sky what you look up looks a little bit lighter as it's pushing more light through is that water vapor is intensifying to light and lightening the light okay so along the horizon line is some of the lightest areas of your sky the darkest area of your sky is right above you and go check that disco walk outside on a nice blue sky day and look out there be darker up there and lighter and I find that happen but then the cloud itself the cloud itself is going to have a light side it's going to have a shadow side to it so here by looking at this cloud we know that it's more this is more during the midday of it because the shadow of the cloud is way at the bottom now how much does that shadow of that cloud you you see that has to do with perspective we'll talk about that real quick in just a minute but basically you see more of the bottom so you'll actually see more gray a lot more great to the Klug's in the in a midday in the top area of the painting in the mid area of the painting and less and less and less as you go to the back you'll see more and more light to it okay so and that's because the angle is getting lower so if you're looking at it like here your clouds that's right here you're seeing a little bit of the a little bit at the top if it's up here you're saying most of the bottom of it of the cloud if it's down here too along the right line you're seeing most of the top of the clock here that's just the way it works where that cloud is like this and what you're seeing in reference to your eye line okay so the waters class all kinds of clouds I love these I took these little pictures of wispy clouds one day as the wind was just disintegrating them and blowing them off in two different directions I love these clouds too this will probably this would make you know get rid of this this would make a beautiful set of clouds light wispy clouds into a painting somewhere is you know like the one like st. Andrew's falls or something like that where the painting is going to be more about that what the subject matter in the landscape itself I took this this is early morning out of Nebraska one day I love in Nebraska likes the the morning you can see the Sun coming up there look at the delight the luminosity of the light of the clouds there on to the left lower left you see the shadow area of the cloud up to the top er top area of the cloud little bits little flicks of the of the cloud like up into up into this area up in here little flicks of the cloud up in the center there get little light now that's what constable does which is great you'll put this darks in there and then put these little flicks and pushes of light and that actually happens if you start to look at clouds that actually happens and that's why his paintings are so fantastic and then look at the you know the differences of the delight how they're expressed and look at those bright light edges as it gets closer to that sunlight there there's this magnificent you can see the Sun this is right before that this is actually a picture before the last one where the Sun is just beginning to come up and you see it just beginning the light situation that would be a beautiful set for a for painting sometime and here I have a sunrise and I love the taking both the Sun rises and the Sun sets this is that same thing looking and I was looking at this how the light was hitting and look at the darks those dark sitting right in front of the lights and real close to where the sunrise look at that that edge of that light reflecting off the bottom of that cloud right up into that area there and you know that's that's just what bierstadt was painting in that one it's just fantastic so when that light when you have that sunrise and sunset and that light's real low you're going to get that real warm light sometimes orange beer set put orange on top of that purple and it's hitting the underside of those of those clouds there this magnificent here's another one where you see that real light see it's actually hitting there below and so the doc the darker part of the clouds are on top here so when you look at this one right here the Sun is low the light part of the cloud is at the bottom here and the dark part is at the top but during the midday if we go back and we look at a cloud during the midday it's reversed the light part of the cloud is at the top and the shadow part of the cloud is at the bottom so your technique that you use to paint clouds is very much dependent upon where that Sun is okay so that's the first thing that you have to decide and so when you start to go attack your clouds where is your son how is it going to light those clouds those clouds are objects just like a mountain and a tree and a rock in your painting is an object that clouds an object and it's going to be lit by that Sun and it's going to be lit by that Sun depending upon where that Sun is okay that's different here you see beautiful you can see the light source you can see the light coming from the left here lighting up those edges and you'll get that luminosity edge now how does the artist capture that the Ducks would do it through layers and layers and layers of color Bierstadt would do it through you know putting down that warm yellow first and then put in some purples and then put in some lights and capture that luminosity of that of their cloud constable would do it even different when you know push some of those colors in even wet in the way some of times translucent sometimes more quick you put those yellows and more translucent and more a little bit more with the opaque of the purples and a little bit translucent with the white and push those colors around and so each one's going to be doing it a little bit different big thing is I want you to just see what is a cloud there's all different kinds of clouds you know start collecting all kinds of serious and Stratus there's all different kinds of clouds but how are they going to get lit up that's what I want you to see their lighting is always a little bit different and then there's always the drama you know this is just like right out of cook this in Nebraska once a sand storm was coming in right out of a you know one of Bierstadt's or Thomas Ryan or something like that coming in with that blue sky and these darks coming in look at these dark clouds coming in right across the light clouds lights in wispy clouds that are shown there in the back of these powerful dark clouds delight sitting off behind over to the the right behind these dark so what is making these clouds over here on the right so dark it is because you're actually looking at the shadow side of the cloud okay those ones that are way off into the back they're being lit by the Sun but they're positioned to you too so the cloud is here the Sun is here and then the next clouds are here and so you have these dark clouds right here because you're looking at the shadow side of them you're looking at the light side of these guys back over here and the sun's right in between them fantastic color setup you see Bierstadt do that you'll see all right you'll see constable do that you'll see all of the artists the Ducks from and rise to all of the artists do that particular type of technique too so where do the lights and dark clouds ball pens on where you're going to put your Sun within your painting and look at all the different types of clouds that you're going to have okay we'll look at some specific shapes of clouds in just a moment you know before we get into that simple little cloud what I should public do is take it just for a couple minutes here and talk to you about perspective because it's so very important now it doesn't actually well it does play a role in how you're going to paint your cloud it applies mostly though to the overall feeling of the landscape itself that you're going to paint this cloth or seascape that you're going to be painting this cloud in when I did the quick and easy landscape series one of the things I made is this perspective grid which was very very helpful and it shows you where I put up a vanishing point here then all your objects wherever it's drawn here will try to recede down and shape towards that particular object and I have some very simple DVDs on perspective that are very important that also applies to the clock to the sky now for many years I painted landscapes without realizing that that applies to the sky too so now when I went back and I looked at bierstadt or and beers tant uses it quite a bit different but I look at some of the Dutch and I look at constable and I look at Moran and some of the how they're using their clouds depending upon the painting itself in the feeling they want to use sometimes they will set up this visual journey within the clouds themselves and what you do is you set up just a descending cloud pattern like this and you put it into the planes of the cloud and then that goes back and that visually helps you to you're you know do your online or to your prospective spot that you that you're going to establish okay so sometimes those those those perspective or those lines can really help you add visual depth to your painting and so when you look at when you look at pictures and stuff like that for example this particular one here now my wife and I were driving back from Nebraska and I said oh quick grab the camera take a picture of those clouds because it's perfect when you look at these clouds here you have larger clouds up in here into the top right and then they're descending down in size as they go further back towards horizon and you can almost look at this road follow the road on that becomes your vanishing point way down here is the point of the roadworks disappearing into the horizon here and you're looking at the clouds here descending down inside now also look at the clouds themself like I said earlier up here at the top part of this cloud here at the top-right cloud you're going to see more of the bottom of the cloud and then you see less and less and less at the bottom of the clock and that bottom becomes more of a line as they get further back there but that's the visual perspective that these little clouds can have and so sometimes that visual journey you as the artist you can use your clouds to add a visual journey here the road and the clouds are both adding a visual journey to my particular path I love this picture that I took out in Nebraska here one day of my son's house and this cloud sweeps around from the top around to the right and then all the way back these line of clouds all the way back to the back so here up at the top you see the dark bottoms of the clouds against the blue sky just like a beer stand and Moran are doing okay which is more one kind and constables doing and then the clouds you see less and less and less of that wide-angle about you know as they go further back there but you can see they get smaller and smaller and then it actually follows along in that little triangle this one also shows the light the light area of the sky along the horizon line to the dark blue up into the top corner as well beautiful little example of it but sometimes you want to paint puffy clouds and you want those clouds to still have a little bit of visual journey this one does in here I took this one because I love this and I'm probably going to put this one into a landscape as well is because it has this beautiful blend of both light and dark and puffy clouds an intermittent bit of the the Blues and notice the light blue area right into the center of the painting there and then up in the top right corner right up there there'll be some dark blue right up there but then you see the clouds on the right side you see them kind of descend down sighs you see the the bottoms of them gets smaller and you'll see just a visual journey set up perspective wise through the particular class but it's it's ever so soft it's not as dramatic as some of the other clouds that I just showed it so it's a little bit softer in this presentation so you can you can determine that's what the artist is going to do determine how much you're going to put that subtly into your clouds you're going to put it just right there for everyone to see into your class you can you can determine that this is another one that's just kind of subtle so in its journey has a nice journey through the clouds especially over here on the right side you see the line going right down to the backpack here you'll see the line reinforced by the centerline coming right down through here right there and so there is actually you know they're all heading towards a little vanishing point there and again look at how dark the sky is up here at the top and like the sky is down there at the bottom so that again that's another one more it's very very fun to see the differences and stuff into the sky this one picture I took one morning out in front of our house one winter morning and and it was it's beautiful because it shows linear perspective into the sky into the cloth these roll on wall clouds coming in one morning and it doesn't happen very often but you see just the lines of descending line wider lines at the top up here in the front and then get narrow narrow narrow as they get further back towards the towards the horizon line just a perfect example of perspective there so what do we mean by perspective well if you know if you are a Dutch painter let's say for example here let's just take a little lift we'll do two paintings to your side by side you know how would you know say Bierstadt's do it too how would a Dutch painter do it here okay we'll come in just a little bit bigger here we go okay so a Dutch painter would drop their their horizon line down a little bit lower they would make the whole paintings about the clock so you'd have a cloud and you'd have a visual a line of your cloud descending back down into here so that controls the your journey so your eyes going back to here of course you'll have some objects here and descending down here but this will these clouds here will control the journey now I'll hide some of that with some other clouds and stuff in sight of here some other clouds and stuff coming here but inside of here very clearly I'll put the visual journey and so the bottom of the cloud is going to become more visible here which is going to grab your contrast to bring it forward and then it's going to become less visible and less visible and less visible as it goes down this way to just torch the line so that's basically how your clouds are going to go back into here you want bierstadt would come in here and he would put mountain and routing here bring his lineup Kochs and mountain the mountain the mountain the mountain and take you this way here like this maybe have a little you know lake or something like that here so you've created this this visual journey here this way through the painting this way coming down and through the painting coming down like this and then in many of his paintings his clouds would be used just as horizontal accents to this particular line that he is traveling this way here taking you this way so they may be big clouds and maybe here they may just be horizontal line clouds like we showed in that one there and then sometimes he'll use those clouds as being powerful movement so you know where are you going to set your horizon line you're going to be is it going to be all about this clouds like the Dutch you know coming over here setting the horizon line load painting a lot of clouds is it going to be like are you going to do a lot of mountains and stuff like that in here with a lot of mountain interest and everything here and let this go back go back go back go back down like this putting your horizon line have your visual journey some lake or something like that you know all your elements you know going back here heading towards that visual journey there and put clouds just softly in there you're going to do it like st. Andrews Falls or you're going to just do this very thin layers of cirrus clouds and put all the interest into landscape there's a lot of things to do my job is to just notice how these artists are capturing some of the effect and how they're using a class you're not just taking the brush and applying a bunch of clouds in there the clouds support and can become the focal area of your painting if you do it carefully but also use them to establish perspective okay and so as you're looking at some of these paintings look for a vanishing point within the clouds descending and ascending cloud size down watch where you put your shadows and how you put your shadows in accordance with your light source okay let's go take a look now at that simple cloth now you have lots of different ways that you can attack a simple clock but let's first look at words light in shadow some things to consider about painting the cloud okay so here we have a simple little clock now when you look at a simple little cloud you know you have the cloud let's just put a little cloud line out here like this okay so we have a simple little cloud that we're going to be painting here this one right here you can definitely see the light is up from the top side of it because the shadow of the cloud is down here into the bottom side of the cloud and notice that it is almost a circular or ellipse here of the cloud itself it's right down into this area of the cloud there's other little break areas of the cloud where that shadow is going to come up and that is because the cloud just isn't round it has little portions of it here and there that are breaking it up into smaller little rounded units here just like the cloud is just like an apple it's just like anything else okay and it's going to carry the light source to it here when you look at this little cloud so it has a light source to it it has some of the shadows coming up some of the shadows coming up to here it has the light the shadow side is right down through here a little bit of the light hits on this bottom side over here because the light that just shows that the light is coming from over back up over this area back up to the left and back just a little bit so it's going to light that little edge there some painters will do the luminosity to that that's what they would look for in their clouds like it's dropping to sunset or something like that and that's the back edge we'll talk more about that but you're going to have this shadow edge you can have a lighter shadow that's going to separate up in here some of the dip various different areas of the shadow some of the things that you might want to consider when painting your cloud is more of an edge and then you have the part of the cloud which is going to be disintegrated the cloud is moving on this cloud isn't moving that much but if the cloud is moving it's going to be disintegrating on one side a little bit here as the wind is pushing it through it's going to have a building side and a side that's being pushed through okay and so the building side will have more hard edges right here more crisp line edges and here will be more wispy to it right here so that's how you say set movement and I showed the pictures earlier a little cirrus clouds and broken up clouds and moving along the sky some of that can be added into your painting very gently like with a little bristle of fusion we'll show you that and that just adds movement to it so you're going to have movement to your sky you know that's one of the things that artists always say I read something about from an artist here the other day that said one of the most important things to establish in your painting is movement and I thought that took back I was taken back because some of the dust and everything said lights and darks of that contrasted warms and cools and this artist was a more modern day artist today very good selling artists said movement because your your painting has to tell a story if it's not telling a story if it's not exciting then it is not interesting so there's a lonely little cloud sitting up there all by itself is not an interesting little thing to paint but a cloud that's moving slightly is a little bit more interesting that grabs more visual elements and interest and so that's something you might want to consider but look at the cloud itself notice the shadow down here now what do we notice about the shadow the shadow here is cool so underneath here this is the cool side of the cloud right down here this whole bottom side here is the cool side of the cloud yes these are shadows here but they are a little bit warmer a little bit more maybe a little yellow into there it's a little bit warmer so you definitely wanted to be darker cooler Gray's down in through here warmer gray this is where artists like Bierstadt will be tossing in some of his purples and stuff like that to accentuate that coolness to the cloud look at the sky here too a little darker and a little lighter back through here okay so you're going to have some subtle shadows on here you may have more of an edge to one side you may disintegrate the cloud over here on one side smaller little edges here but all of this all of this will have little areas here there are little shadows coming through here that's going to give the cloud interest and it's going to give the cloud roundness too but this is the most important thing to establish right there within your cloud and of course as you get more and more clouds than what you're going to do is get more and more things to look at within your clouds here and you know here you can see the light is coming up from this side here look at the deep shadow here this is the bottom side of it you're looking through the thickness of the cloud here that's why it's so dark if so this taller cloud here is darker do you get that the taller cloud is darker right there now of course some of that varies with water vapor how much it's carrying and stuff but a thinner cloud more light passes through it and should the shadow can be lighter so here a thinner cloud the shadow can be a little lighter the darker cloud here if these are the same types of clouds the darker cloud will have a little bit darker colors to the shadow side because it's a thicker cloud and light isn't passing as far through it as it is the thinner Club notice the difference in the shapes of the shadows but even your side shadows up through here are not as dark as that bottom shadow that's right up and through here okay so your darker shadows there at the bottom left part of your cloud here's another one nice little nice little cloud here and this one I like because it shows a little bit there's a little bit of dark that's right here shows you that that light is is right up over here on this side so you're actually looking at a little bit of the shadow of the cloud here I've gotten a light sitting right in between here but look at the so look at the real dark areas of the cloud right through here here and that's another one that tells you where is that light on there there's you know that light coming from right back up here but this shadow is folding around so that's this is a round object so you might sometimes pick up that darker in front that's just like the dark petal in front of a round Rose so how does that happen because it's curling around past the light and you're seeing a little bit of the shadow on the other side we call it the form shadow of an object it's called the form shadow of and so even a cloud will have a form shadow if it's a nice beautiful round cloud it's going to have a form show it's going to have a light side form shadow see the form shadow here this is the shadow this is the form shadow of the cloud right here and then of course you have your highlight and then here you have a destructive part of the cloud the clouds moving this way and you have a building part of the cloud here with nice nice edges and stuff like that to it so you have some different ways to it now one last little cloud and and that I want to show you is one that I took one evening out here in front of my house here in Pennsylvania and I just watched it through the evening there's one little cloud in the in the sky it was all lonely and I thought that's the perfect study I wanted to watch it through the evening as it was settling down and so here it is right before sunset and you can see you know this beside you has a lifetime in the shadow side pretty clearly to it here but because the Sun is now dropping down at this angle to it here the shadow is not darkest at the bottom there the shadow is more off onto this side as over here but look at the warm colors and then the purpley colors that are coming here off to that side here fantastic and and it's going to change it's all going to change here as I start to as the Sun starts to go down but it's beautiful to to look at this particular cloud this would make a nice evening pane with a nice evening cloud here and then if the Sun goes lower it's going to hit more along and through here but as and I took different things of white angles of this little cloud that walks this one little cloth this is same cloud as the Sun is hitting in different positions and so here's the Sun hitting right to here now we'll look at this the Sun is sitting right here like this now let's just come in real close and look at this here what do we see in this cloud now you'll see what the Hudson River painters are talking about that luminosity that edge see that light edge right there and that's what they're doing with the real warm color right there coming in so you may take your little bristle brush or something like that you may just dance a little bit of that warm look at the cool dark purpley color that's right up in here onto this side nice Chris dark color through the majority of that particular Club because you look in through the thickness the Sun now is so low the angle is so low and so much to the back here doesn't have enough power to go through the cloud to light up the cloud so the cloud actually starts to go a little bit darker then in the evening time here as a good as that the Sun went down a little bit more and the power went away from it just a little bit more I was really quite taken with here that that edge how much softer that edge we can and you can just see a little bit as I zoomed in here on this one to the little tiny bit of that maybe capture a little bit of that that evening glow right up through here just a little bit of it but the edges of this I was on the shadow side of it which is the contrast side of it this time is how much those edges just got so dark there so you know when you're studying the luminosity of it when you're studying the luminosity of the clouds that's what they're saying especially your that's going to happen when you have that sunrise in that sunset and wonder if I I really want to paint and I'm going to paint it with you sometimes is this I took this one in Nebraska and this is a sunrise of a cloud here and I absolutely love this I want to paint this into a painting and you the sun's coming up this way through here so it's lighting up through here as we get to the sickness part of the area of the cloud you'll see you can see the shadow here or excuse me the light traveling through the cloud here see that see the light traveling the disc is that warm that warm color then slowly becomes cool that purpley color right in through here then picks up more of the Stratus right up through here it's just beautiful and just little bits of that purpley color come back to here just really pretty and so you can look up you know right out through here now look at this this is what I've talked about about possible he'd come in here and he put some of these percentages to stab that with that light that's hitting right on there that someone who really studies those clouds and look at that light edge right there so that dark edge there's a light to dark and a light to a dark and a light to a darkest it's traveling through so you see in all these lights you know travel through these clouds it's fantastic okay now as we look back over to the other side of the cloud Mort or the clouds that are on the horizon that are angled with this with the lights or the same picture but look at here's that orange a warm color right up against that purpley color and look at how it is bright here and then it's slowly it slowly diminishes down here too to nothing on this side of the painting here so it really tracks here's your light and then you're like this just disintegrates come in here but you'll pick up little edges of it here just like constable does in his painting this little edges of that of that light traveling through but it's getting less and less and less so you're setting up your life and you're moving your light through like that okay gives you a different way to look at a Klaus when you look at a cloud I want you to look at it has a light side it has a shadows shadow side where is that shadow and how high is that shadow on that cloud is going to be pendent upon what angle you're looking at that cloud where it is in your actual painting and then how dark it is by how thick it is or how powerful the light source is okay and then the type of light that you have do you are you down by that horizon where it's picking up more atmospherics where the colors are coming out more Orange or is it up high where the colors are picking up more the yellows and wharfs of the day okay so there's a lot of things to do so with that they'll give you some ideas to how to look at some of these class let's go paint some simple clouds and some of the different types of techniques you can use to paint cups there are lots of ways in which you can paint clouds you can use your bristle brush you can use synthetic brushes you can use your palette knife I've used them all in all different kinds of situations in my DVD since and the landscapes and seascapes that you're painting one of the things that what's what's going to control there what are some of the things that I think about what I'm going to grab that is how interesting or what kind of statement is that cloud going to make within my painting and I try to paint my clouds with some of the same techniques that I'm going to do with my landscapes therefore I get a better harmony of techniques within the painting that I'm going to do here I have a just a simple board that I'm going to be painting here and I just say started with a little sailor blue and a little bit of white just a light kind of grayish blue here just so I could do some painting most of the time I start with my skies and stuff with white and it's just going to take up too much video for me to sit there and put base coat all blue all the time so I'm just going to do a real fast - because I know a lot of things I want to show you let's talk about some of our techniques you have a bristle brush I love these these are board bristle brushes this is you know Constable's one of Constable's uses and of course Bierstadt majority of your landscape painters use the bristle brush as it comes in around some flax and filbert's and different sizes I tend to over size as much as possible I follow along the theories of John Singer Sargent use a bigger brush as possible to make areas of statements because then you take less strokes and then the color has more interest and not just the brushstroke and interest I like to use my fusion brushes and I generally use these big I like this instead of a mop or anything like that's a big oval soft one I use fusion brushes like this to do a lot of the painting cloud painting the filbert's sometimes flats that give a little bit different type of cloud than a filbert does but these are soft these are some of my favorite cloud painting brushes they make generally make softer clouds than bristle brushes and then the knife the knife is one of my favorite all-time favorite things to pay because it makes shapes irregular shapes that are not like the stroke six now constable we saw we can put strokes and stuff in there the knife bierstadt and some of the other seascape artists Moran stuff like to have these other shapes in there that are there more natural looking shapes a so you don't see this this type of stroke or anything though within it and I emulate those really well by using the nice of the night paints you know some some very absolutely very beautiful beautiful shapes to it so I use a knife and a lot in the seascape and you'll see me in some of the seascape video use a knife up there into the clouds again there's moths that you can use or some people that like to use the moss to mop that will mock the cloud and do this now that is and it works very well and you know to get it emulate like a dust look and stuff like that yes that works very very well the problem with it is a lot of artists that I see out there over Mach they're pieces they're painting with it so close here and they mop it so much that it looks beautiful when they're looking at it from a foot or you're looking at it just this far away what you should do when you look at your painting is put it if it's going to hang on the wall put it on the wall and step back three feet now if that cloud looks flat or plastic and lacks its interest you've mocked too much and most of the painters out there are see Mont that use mocks Mont too much so mops are dangerous and I don't use them very much at all in any of my painting because I can do it with the soft refusion brush like this and still get a softer look with without mopping and because that mopping will destroy all the movement and I don't because I've got optical blending that's going to happen at three feet so the techniques that I tend to do are made to be viewed at like three feet or so when a painting is hanging on wall let's get into some of this first okay I'm going to take down one of the things that I like to do is I like to do premiere poo I'll print Alla Prima style even with the Dutch style like this I'll start out like this sometimes I'm going to take I always like to work your cloud into a wet background so in whenever you're painting this is the one thing I want you to remember if you have a background or something like here's a blue what you don't want to do is use that same blue again every single time you want to always make your color a little different look at an evening sky how many of the same color do you see you see that color constantly evolving and so so many of the painters today think they have to have the same color and I want you to get out of that right now you're an artist your area that you what you got to do is add interest and you add interest by always making your colors different okay so constantly brush mix to make colors different so maybe I'm going to make this light blue and this time I'm going to reach up and grab a little bit of my red violet toss it up into here make more of a purpley kind of color here into this blue color that I'll have that I'll add into this sky and I'm just using my 3/4 inch brush here I'm going to put some of this color down now if I want to truly track what it what happens in the sky here I will put a little bit darker blue right what are we thinking here a little darker blue would go up at the top lighter blue would go down at the bottom down through here like this okay so I'll move some some lighter blue here up here at the top I mean excuse me darker blue like this and work my sky down now years ago like when I painted with it took a lot of you know lessons up follow him on PBS every day from Bill Alexander he put out this magic light onto this surface and start with blue and then walk it down through the lights and what the white what it does is mix up with the whites and that's when I do a lot of times I take a real thin white like this this is just wide and extender and I put that onto the canvas and then I take a blue at the top and I walk the cat and walk it down so it becomes darker at the top lighter down at the bottom and what is that that's emulating what is happening in nature a lot of Nandor put used to use I mean started that technique that a lot of artists picked up on and used for years and years and years Bob loss and everything and they advanced that technique and did fantastic things all artists do with that and the whole thing is you know how are you going to do this you know how you going to do that that becomes your statement as the art but when you look at basic sky a basic simple sky is like this okay a basic simple sky is a little darker at the top lighter as it gets down here towards my horizon so if I put in any of my like let's just put in a little bit of a green color here and if I want to make a quick statement here just real quick here of agreeing let's just say so put some green down here I'll have some green grass here right down here green grass out at the bottom like this as that grass goes back in the painting it's going to become more like the sky and this is what you simply do you just simply add that that grass color right into the or the sky color right into that grass you go like this and add that right into there so what happens is you get darker and you get darker so you get this the two of them come together right along the horizon line and that's what makes the horizon line is where the two get lighter and lighter and lighter and they come together almost to the same color right through there so and after what artists do that's how you get this visual perspective this is what happens into the distance and so as we add objects up here into the front and it doesn't make a difference what you add could be a little bush or something like that as I add this if I say this is going to be a little bush or something here as I add this this is going to become smaller and lighter and more and more and more and more and more visually like the horizon there and that will push it right to the back and the same thing with a cloud here as I go back with the cloud okay so in your mind you're setting up your first set up is darker at the top up here this is what happens and then as you get to the horizon line because you're looking through more of that water vapor it's got to become lighter so you set your ground up like that let's just let's just push that back like that so you see a little bit of and that's what's going to give you your perspective now as you get up in here let's talk about simple little clouds okay we got to paint some clouds now I put down background color I put down color like this because it gives me something to paint into something to soften into I like to do that now how much is very very important okay you don't want your color feeling wet if it's really wet your cloud is just going to is this not going to stick okay and you want quite a bit of paint if you have too much paint your clouds not going to show up so part of the whole process of learning how to paint and then the majority I feel of the process is how much paint to use that is very important I'm going to say it again how much paint to use don't just slap paint on here without feeling the surface and thinking how much paint to use because how much is on the surface is going to make it either easy or difficult to paint you want just enough now how much is enough that's going to vary for each one of us and very determining upon the technique or the tool that I'm going to use if I'm using a soft fusion brush one like the East here I can have less paint on the surface and I'll be able to get a nice cloud with these if I am using a stiffer brush like this a bristle brush I need more paint on the surface because the bristle is going to dig holes and it's going to dig up and remove and take off and stuff really easy because it's a stiffer brush so if I'm going to be very soft I can have I'm going to use a fusion or something like that I can have a little bit less color or a little bit less color on the surface as I head to the bristle a stiffer brush I like stiffer paint thicker paint stiffer paint onto the surface so if you're if you're moving your brush and you're digging it up and you're seeing your background goes why does the canvas come through or something like that you don't have enough paint on the surface okay and watch that that is the most important thing that's why I say it several times is how much paint do you have on the surface and if you're fighting it and their cloud isn't staying you can't see your cloud the second you touch it it disappears you have too much on the surface very that that's what I want you to practice first and any of your painting and whether you're painting a rose with me or whether you're painting the cloud doesn't make a difference how much paints on the surface okay now let's come down here and let's just grab some I'm just going to use a soft a little bristle I mean a soft little fusion we'll try that notice how thick my white is here this is how thick I will I like my wine and in the oil painting we used to always say sick paints tins sticks to send paint okay and we would make beautiful sick clouds and stuff like that because the paint that the white is so sick now will step off to the side here let's take a little bit of the yellow now what's the yellow going to do it's going to be a nice warm color let's get a little black maybe even a little bit of the red violet over here there's a little shadow cooler shadow shadowy gray color we'll make kind of a warm 2a and we even put a little bit of blue into that too so we'll get this as a kind of grayish color over here so this will make a pretty little clouds especially if I get a little bit more blue into it like it like what you see in the painting there that's beautiful so there's some very cool color but what I don't want to do is always get the same color so I might have a little violet in that too I'll go up here towards my warms now if I have green on there I might even add a little bit of green up into these whites here too right up into your clouds your job as artists is to paint beautiful harmony look at the beautiful core yellow green light yellow green gray that that makes right there it's beautiful right down into here into some of your shadows here that will go and even just a little bit of black here some of your deepest darkest coolest shadows look at the shadows that would be on that cloud that would be a beautiful cloud to paint within then so I'm using some of the colors that I already have out here but let's first let's just take a little bit of that grand brush well this model some of this thick white the first thing is to do is to come in and let's just say we're going to paint a simple little cloud I'm going to think of the building side of the cloud here so we'll build up a little bit of the cloud how much of the cloud you're going to see now if I don't reload my brush and I just lighten up like this that little fusion will soften as I head from the building edge of the cloud over to the wispy edge of the cloud over here like this it'll happen just naturally now a lot of times I like to hold my brush like this and this is how I always tell everybody hold your brush down like this onto it and paint more flat that keeps you from going like this and dabbing you know constable constable will do that constable will do that keep wanting to call them constant constable will do that and dab at it will show you that but I can use this like this I can just whisper this over the surface like this and create soft little edges I can use this a little bit more harsh up here with a little bit like this and set up some back edges to this little cloud here like this we can drag it out when you have wet colors on the surface this is the beautiful part you can just go like this use your finger and add just a little bit of movement here beautiful movement to your cloud that's what I like to do with that wet I like to come in let's come in a little closer you see that see that beautiful movement right there to the cloud that you can add then I'll come back in and very simply I'll come back in tap in a little more of my light and do that again maybe build another little part of the cloud another little round part of the cloud here and that makes a beautiful simple little cloud I can whisper this just take a little bit this is why I love these fusions because the cloud is already very soft I can take this if I wanted to give it a wispy edge or say I wanted to do some type of strategy type clouds real wispy Stratus type clouds up here like this I just drag this over the surface like this okay drag it like that then just take your finger because I have a little bit of wet paint here on the surface now it's not really wet it's still blue but it's a little bit sticky just a little bit sticky and that's what you want to wait for sometimes you might have to wait a few minutes for that but you want to wait for that now why because if it's too wet when you come to do this everything is just going to move together but if it's sticky it has resistance underneath your hand and I can just lightly pull this like this and I'll get that little wispy effect now you can use your brush to pull this too since I don't like to use the mop but you can use a brush like this and you notice how that brush softens it faster than my finger does but that's going to give you all these wispy little edges right like this onto that cloud put a few right up over here maybe a little bit more of an edge of a cloud right here like that and we can just whisper those just like that and give that nice movement to that little edge of that cloud there and let's add that's the disintegrating part of it let's add a little a little part trying to build the building part of the cloud let's just add a little bit of it I want to be a cloud right into there and whisper that back just a bit there and you'll get a little more of that wispy look to that particular cloud there isn't that kind of pretty along the Verizon line as you go back through here you want to think okay I want to think I want to get my clouds a little bit lower a little softer right down in here maybe not quite as much the angle of these has to change a little bit so that the axial angle of the cloud has to become less as it gets further along the horizon here in the bottom that cloud will become more of an angle like that and you can just whisper ever so lightly just a little bit here along the horizon line what that little cloud will look like that so then you get this depth through your painting here of your clouds it's just like that okay and I painted this whole thing with one little brush nice soft little cloud and but and then I can come back in and say okay I want to add just a little bit more this is just a little three-minute cloud but once you understand them once you understand them in some of their movement like this you can do some pretty little stuff now constable could come back in and tap like that but see because of the fusion because I use a fusion and not that bristle which is more stiff I don't have to stab at it I can just lightly kiss the surface like this and just add some beautiful little cloud setups just like that and it gives a nice it gives a a really really nice look to the painting so I'll use thick paint like this just on a surface that has just a little bit of stuff there and then I will think of a building edge and a wispy edge and I get a nice look to some class that way and of course you can build up more and stuff like that over there but that's one way and then of course you know how much that building edge you're going to put here on the types of edges and stuff like that that's up to you but with this with this brush here this is a little number 10 fusion brush soft hold it flat you stiff paint like this and put that in there and that is very very easy to paint a simple little cloud now we didn't add shadows and stuff to this one but you can will add shadows to the next one but that's just a simple little cloud then we'll go do another one here and we'll add some shadows to it okay see you just minute now we'll take that simple little cloud and we'll add a shadow to it so let's come back in same type of saying watch the consistency of your paint I'm going to take some extender my 3/4 inch brush will take a little bit of our blue I have a little bit of blue and a little bit of red violet and that just change up the blue like I said before change that up that gives more variation to your sky what are we set up you set up the light the dark into our sky here now if you're going to you know if you're going to paint a lot of landscapes like I do then you might want to set up a little container of that white and send it down with the extender to us exactly the consistency that you like to paint in that works for you adjust it with the extender then you already have your own little like Bill Alexander did force your own magic light it is right at the the exact consistency that you need to get some of those effects that you like to use and that's what I do so I'm going to put some blue dots in here I'm going to put a little bit lighter down here at the bottom of the horizon line this time I'll get a little bit more casual with this here so I'm just going to scrub this up I love my skies now as an artist to have movement and I like this kind of movement here where I scrub the brush like this and then pull back and forth through it like that I love that type of from Reagan rather than you know some of my students make too much of a mistake in that they go a lot of back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth like this so the sky really moves horizontally now that's not completely wrong we saw Biersack do it in this painting but if you if you're painting in a small composition and you want to use that sky it helps you add some movement rather than do that let's model it up and let's do that not with this with the background of the sky let's do that with the clouds so we'll model this up like this which is truly what happens in the visual part of the sky then we'll do that simulator so let's just put a little green just a little bit here just touch say we did it here just like this and then how do you make this green if I do this grain how do we make this green with seed what do we add to it to make it receives where do we make how do we make anything receiving our painting we have the sky's color to it so let's just put a little sky color right there on the edge of our brain and all Sun will set up a little vanishing a little a little bit of depth a little bit of depth perspective and so it will come more green up through here and then that color will just become visually more like the sky as it goes to the back and that's what we want to do okay so we set that up we could have a little bit darker but I'm going to show you some other back painting techniques here with this one we'll set that brush off here to the side let's go back to our soft one this time we'll build a cloud we'll build a shadow and build a cloud we'll build a cloud with a little more interest so let's say that you you know the last cloud that we use simple little cloud you might use that like st. Andrew's falls so the end before the cloud is just with the white soft a lot of stuff doesn't have a lot of power to it you're going to have a lot of power to the lower part of your painting like in a landscape now let's get more power to the cloud itself to give more power to the cloud we need to paint more of the cloud so we'll come back in here we'll grab some of our thick white we have some of our Gray's over here that we made earlier I'm going to come back up over here I'm going to say okay here comes my cloud here and I'm going to whisper this out I'm going to use the brush very flat cuz I'm paying in here with this one now I can go back and go back and go back and add an ad and AD but as I'm going to paint this cloud here but what I want to do and we'll paint like that little cloud we saw earlier here what I want to do is I want to paint this cloud and I'm going to visually add a shadow to it so I'm going to paint this cloud a little bit more here a little bit more of its shape here like this and let's give it a disintegrated edge here so it's a little wind blown it's good because I like those and we can travel that just with your hand see how nice that travels there just like that I love those just to have a little bit of action or movement to it and that's what's so important is that you know this artist I read in your Saks had he he finds the most important thing that he adds in his paintings his action is moving and boy how does that really affected me and has really affected how I perceive my paintings let's go down and just drag a little bit of that around down here okay and let's just break up our sky up here real flat just very like just kiss the surface like this let what happens happen wiggle it around a little bit like that that'll make that nice high cirrus type clouds going through there like that and then just pull down like this you could use your brush to like I love to use these brushes here to just drag through if you don't want to use your hand I love to use my hand but if you don't want to use your hand you can just drag through like that and just give a little bit of that motion to those they're so fun to paint into into that surface so fun to paint so let's come in now now so we have this bigger cloud now down below here we want to take some of our gray so earlier what I did in the last cloud there is I had a little bit of my gray some black some yellow some a little bit of violet here and we'll just add a little bit more extender here to them loosen that up just a bit strike just a touch let's use this very flat let's come back in here and let's set in the shadow side of a cloud now this is going to be a cloud that in a pain where you want to have more interest so the first one is a very soft set sky now we're going to come in with a cloud that's going to have more interest and by giving it more shadow it'll have more interest let's take just a touch more black right into some of our violet and just like anything you can think there's the softer shadow now we'll come in here and we'll impart the deeper shadow area to the cloud right over here so if lights coming down through the cloud through this way right in through here like this this will be the deeper edge of the cloud now take your brush you can pinch wipe that off you can soften this many different ways you can mop it which I don't like to do because I lose too much of my interest you can use your softer brush like this and you can just just hit the edges of it just hit the edges of it like that see how that this soften just hit the edges don't mop the whole thing just hit the edges or you can use like I like to do is I just run my finger around it just a bit like that and that adds some the shadow and the movement into the clouds there like that so now I got a deeper part of that shadow I want to push that shadow out a little bit farther out here I've got to look for what shape that oval kind of shapes here on the bottom of this cloud here and of course depending on where the cloud is if it's up high or low that shadow shape changes the amount of shadow that's there changes right now if I do this just lightly whisper some of this around and drag over let some of this drag over even some of that shadow just come in just a little closer here okay so now I'll let some of this drag right over the show you get a better layering of the shadow now the Dutch used to do this and they would dry and put in another layer thin transparent washes of layer but if we're painting with the heritage like this Allah prema we can do it just right now with these real soft brushes flat just grab that pull through like this and you'll get that light color dragging right over that shadow like this and that'll set that shadow in that cloud that shadow right into the cloud okay so now let's come in so I have a nice little shadow there okay now let's come in and let's add a little bit of warmth to that so I'm going to come right over here and add a little bit of warmth so if you're going to paint a cloud here now that is going to have more interest so first we get delight okay then when I add the shadow then we're going to add a of our warmth to the to the cloud here up on to the warmer side warm area highlights lights to the cloud here okay light colors to the cloud let some of that wispy little Blues come through because that makes that sheer and I'm just using the thin part of the brush this is what has a lot of this fusion hair this soft hair will just let that Jess let's just break up this edge of the cloud there just a bit as well okay we'll drag just a touch maybe of that warmth now right down there now don't worry about that okay I like that but it's a little too harsh so I just wipe it like this now a couple of things I can use my finger and drag it or I can use my brush and pull it if you will give you a little different a little different look here so I can pull it many different ways here and I want it to sit just right over that shadow just a little bit so you get a little wispy through the shadow if you've covered it up too much just take back and add your shadow back in there again and sometimes the layering back and forth will give you great looks or redefining some of the depth of your shadow like that right in there and just whisper some of that right into the bottom of here of your clouds down there it's just a great way to put it in a nice deep part shadow of that cloud but you got in a member you have to have different values so take some of that up here like this work those back and forth and sometimes depending on how interesting I'm going to make that clock I will work that several times so we get that beautiful look there now I'm going to come in and put in imagine my cloud I'll put in some thicker white here but imagine my cloud and you can stab it like constable or so but I will imagine a more round part so I have like two parts to my cloud here so I will come in here and imagine building part of a smaller area of the cloud right in here like maybe this one's building right there and it's got a little light edge - this one right here light there okay we'll drag some of that down sometimes I'll just pull through like this grab some of that movement down here now I'm doing this all with the ten you could also go to a smaller brush as well here let's come in and let's do like a little constable and come in and just hit little areas of that light thinking about little areas of light that might where that might hit on that cloud right up there okay and I've got a little wargs into that we're building little walks I got that - perfect now if I get it to perfect like that what I do is I'll just go like this I'll push it back like this and don't be afraid to do this that adds that nice soft movement in it if you can just come back here and build again build another little edge there on that cloud see is a different little look that you can give it there even want to have that building edge of it here so we'll build that edge there right in there like that okay so you can get a cloud here that has more of the shadow now I'm going to express now I'm going to rework that shadow just a little bit more let's find a little more of a form shadow into the into the cloud maybe a little bit up there we'll find a little bit of the form shadow into the cloud right up in here maybe there's a little bit going on back in here sometimes you'll see me put you know a longer dark coming back like this as its traveling through as the light especially as the light gets a little bit more at this angle little trail through and so you'll pick up more and more of that you might pick up a wispy little edge of the the cloud out here like this okay with the edge of that there I'm going to go down and we'll get a little more detailed here smaller little Silbert and we'll add little bit more edges here to the cloud like that okay a little bit more light in there into this cloud a little bit more light here and there just with a flat see how the hole how flat I'm using so here's a cloud that's coming and I'm going to build this edge of this up a little bit here here's this cloud that's coming here and I'm building here soften that it is I'm doing more to it more more to the cloud itself adding more lights adding form shadows to it form lights to it okay it's getting more paint it's getting more interest it's getting more depth it's going to have more interest within my painting as well here so and then you know you can use real stiff little stuck color like this to put on final little lights and shines and you know you can you can do it more like constable or Bierstadt see these little light areas and shine areas to it you can do that work your cloud out and some small little touches of shadow work your shadows back and forth you got to think of little rounded rounded areas of it okay little little areas of lights and darks and rudiments and stuff and how does that affect your puffy little cloud here and how much do you want to add to your cloud and so it'll give you all different kinds of look so small brush can add more detail a bigger brush here would make it smaller which one's correct well how much interest is your column going to have in your painting and make sure that whatever you do to that cloud you're carrying that same type of technique down into your pinion as well so you'll work with the large you'll work with the small you can add the shadow do I make it darker go and make it more stormy you can do that as well and you'll see that in several of my other DVDs we'll do that okay let's go we'll go grab another board and I'll show you the bristle brush I know welcome back now let's take a look at this brush the bristle brush okay now the bursar verse is stiffer which means you want to paint a little bit stiffer so don't have it quite so loose and right now I've put it on my on my background here just a little bit loose let me show you as I as I move like this over the surface see how it's how that's digging up like that okay and so that's what the bristle will do is it'll dig up and show up to your background so what you need to do is put that background on just a little bit more paint a little bit thicker so I'm just going to reach up here and just add a little more paint here to the area which I'm going to be painting I'm going to take a little bit more of my step back just touch here take a little bit more of my blue and I have a tiny bit of the red violet into that and just take a little bit of the white Internet and let's just add a little more stiffer paint into this area then I'm going to be painting this cloud and again working the the clouds here I mean the area from light and dark here and you don't want that to show up shows up just a little bit not so bad now okay and you want that to have enough paint on just so you don't be digging stuff up let's take our sick paint here let's load load this into nice thick white load this into the bristle okay because you want this thick paint to stick now it's come in close now you'll see the difference of the bristle okay this is the difference of the look that's the look of the bristle okay as opposed to the look that we just did when we load up our my soft brush here of this it this is softer this is softer edge of this with the fusion I can get it very soft with the bristle what's going to happen is I'm going to get it more if I put that on see the difference between the two this has more power more movement this is this is constable this is more move meant more power and this word this one from goes up now you can get this once off but all these little ridges that are in here have lots of paint so you're going to end so it's going to soften out a little bit different see the difference between the two the bristle paints with more power so if I have a scene where I'm going to want a lot of power into my clouds that's your bristle okay and that's why constable in them that appeal he uses that personally gets that movement in everything so it gives you a heck of a lot more movement can give you some pretty movement you can combine the bristle and the fusion together and get some beautiful looking techniques to some of your clouds I mean look at some of these techniques here the beautiful movements through here like this and grabbing this and moving that through I mean that's just lovely movements to the cloud of combining both the bristle and the fusion and with the proper amount of paint on the surface that's that's the most important see how this white paint is sticking exactly where I want it to be that is extremely important it's sticking where I want it to be but let's continue on here with the bristle here okay so the bristle what I'm going to do is I'm going to start in I will wiggle it a little bit if I want it soft I wiggled the bristle just a little bit and I will make that softer look now I will skip the brush over the surface to make more of your your thin clouds and then I will push and wiggle to to move the brush to move the clouds out like that okay so I will load this brush it up with some paint let's load it up here with some white let's push and wiggle some of that white around and build that light let's build this right up here and I'll roll the brush to get different little edges to the cloud here like this okay and we'll push down like this below this will let the the cloud here will let this disk push like this and then we'll roll the brush roll the brush like this to get some different movements of it letting that blue pick up and create the light side and the shadow side here of the cloud you see that just roll it like this just kind of drag the edges here of this and let's just block this down and create some movement down along the horizon line there okay create some just lots of different ways to paint beautiful movements and stuff to your clouds like this okay movements like this to those clouds like that maybe we'll have we'll pick up some more white touch that and like that okay just create some so beautiful but when you look up close here look up real close at this right up in here look at the movement that you get within that cloud and you get more actually with the bristles than you do with the fusion because the bristle has adds more stiffness and movement to it than the fusion fusion softer so the fusion is great the fusion is great for software you want clouds soft and it's not going to be all about the clouds and the bristles really good one it's more about the clouds but you can use both just understand this there's both okay so I'll set this movement up like this let's step back just a bit and I can come in and I can adjust the movement here with my finger running through like this and and grab some of the movement to the cloud like this grab some like the clouds being you know move through the sky there like that and this becomes part of your artistic statement as to how are you as the artist going to paint this cloud maybe this one goes like this and I'll just grab this now you can do this also with your your brush problem is with the brush is the finger I can EAL the contact with the surface and you can't always feel that like the brush so we'll push that in let's just give a secondary little light area like right up and through here and pull this through you know it's good when you when you take lots and lots of pictures of clouds and find how you want to paint some of your clouds you know how you might want to set up and paint some of your clouds and you'll feel you know you look at those gift ideas I never I want when I pink clouds I never try to copy a cloud perfectly what I see out there in nature what I try to do is capture the feeling of it do I see it moving do I see a building do I see it you know the flyaway edges of it you know did the class does the class have Flyway edges and most clouds unless it's absolutely still baked we'll have some flyaway edges there and that's that lovely movement see how much that edge when I add that lovely movement if there and a bristan in and a fusion can come in and just make a real soft area to a cloud that's just so pretty as well right back in there like that you can build these beautiful beautiful clouds like this with that but look at how much more interest that you can build with the with the bristle like this through this cloud here building like this and carrying some of this up like this let's grab some more you know you can do some stab movements of it like this you know constable in them you know he'll do some rounding movements you'll do some pushing horizontal movements he'd like to have some movement back like this that might suggest other movement you know through the sky that that cloud is going to be moving through the sky like this you know so some sometimes with that you have other artists that will paint backwards up into this negatively and you know I'll show that or I'll push some of this back up out of the way like that to create a back soft edge like that and then push a harder more round building edge like maybe right here like this or that cloud looks a little bit different has a soft little side and building side to that okay I can you can also one other little technique that works really really well is and it works for me it works better with the fusion than it does with the bristle but I'll show you is like a Fusion is two negative pink is to lift back off so I can come back here and lift a soft shadow like right into this area of that of that area of the clock so I lifted a little bit of a shadow so I lift off and let a little bit of my blue background show up in there now I like to do that on roses and everything you know because I love the look of those those you know roses and stuff and doing that with them but in petals but it also works in clouds and so you can lift off any type of shadow the bristle is a little harder because it doesn't lift it off quite as smooth but it does lift it off so let's just drag a little bit of this out here like this we'll make this a little bit fractured out through here just so you get an idea we'll run this now when you run the high Stratus or something like that up here just drag this over the surface like that you'll see that the feel is different too look is different you get more of it this body look to that you can add more some angled movement to that like this through you can grab your finger like this and move some of that through like that okay a different look to it here and we'll just soften their dad's build that edge there soften that a little bit there look for those little the bristles nice to do like a little bit of Constable and just come in and just tap like this little bits of that light right in there like that build a beautiful little cloud that way let's just build a little bit more right up in here with that one right there so you can and this is no shadow this is just the sup but look how much more interest you can look at how much interest you can say this little cloud is going to have here and drag these edges and stuff here pull down and drag and look at how much more interest that has just because you're painting that with the bristle now we'll go back we'll add pick a little cloud and we'll paint some shadow in it and come back let's press okay next one so now we'll take that bristle I put the background on again okay now we'll take that bristle let's come in here take some white we're going to put a little shadow this time with this with this cloud we'll come back up here start world low we'll angle hold the brush down flat wiggle it around that starts to make your cloud okay wiggle that around the more you wiggle the softer the cloud comes the more the bristle moves it into that wet paint and the softer that cloud becomes you can restate and you know your lights into that okay how much light you're going to put into this little cloud here maybe you let's let's drag this little cloud out this way a little bit more so we will drag some down this way usually when I paint a cloud with a bristle I don't do it just once I do it several times with the fusion I can do it I can get away with it just once because basically the fusion clouds are clouds that are going to be on soft paintings and when I'm doing the bristle I want these clouds they have more interest so I end up painting them several times step back just a bit here and there's all different kinds of ways and that's for you to find your reference photos what does that sky look like and I showed you some of mine I'm gonna paint that in there we use it as a reference and you know paint that look of it that cloud that is you know maybe it's going to go into the horizon line and into the back and then you see it make this journey into the back like this you know this may become my painting you know here as it goes to the back towards a horizon line this cloud comes around like that up here at the top it comes up against pure dark blue sky giving it lots of contrast and it goes up against the light horizon line back here with a little bit more going on back here so it maintains a softness but that curvature right there just does beautiful things for it here so we have some of this and I get this paint nice and thick and lots of stuff going on there and I'm building this cloud up then I'm going to have right here and I'll just give a few little edges of it back here if I'm going to use this moving around right to the back so you can see that one photo I showed you this is how I would probably attack it and then put some additional movement right up and through here and a lot of times I add this additional movement later after a lot of people say why don't you do that movement first for you build a cloud because a lot of times I let the cloud control the painting and so I will put the cloud in and then I'll look to see how much interest I can have out here with some of this stuff some of these other little bits out here how much I can have and support that will you know support that cloud but not detract from it and take away from it so we went a little bit of that high cirrus movement up through there like that and build this cloud up here just a bit wipe your brush I'm using very stiff thick white and the heritage white I make it very very stick it comes out very stiff I like it stiff I like it thick and can the consistency stuff of it and that just gives me beautiful beautiful stiff paint to work with especially with the bristle to do some of these clouds there and I have all of this type of interest there I can lift back off with this but doesn't lift off quite as well as that fusion does but it doesn't give you a nice look okay now I'm adding the shadow I'll come back up over here and let's just work a little bit of our shadow here okay and I'll grab some of that Greg will imagine some of our shadow let's imagine that this is part of this cloud right here so this thick part of the shadow comes through it'll come through and show up down through these because it will come through or get a little softer it comes up through this part of the cloud we'll just drag that through let's get a little bit more gray maybe a up here towards the warmer it here just a bit right there you get more violet you can get more colors you can look at your clouds and you'll find and discover your colors there but that's putting the shadow into that cloud here let's put a little bit of that shadow here at the bottom side a little bit of that coming through some of this other part of the cloud and you can see that shadow is so the shadow color itself is also contrasting against the blue of the sky and creating almost as much contrast as the blue itself of the light itself then what I do is this pick up some more thick white here and I'll sink that shadow as part of the cloud put a little bit of the cloud back up in front of that shadow here and there now the Ducks would do this in layers and now you know all the prima painters will do it like this dragon really sick light light light touch light light light touch really thick light just drag a little bit of that across the top of the cloud like that we can come back and hit a little bit of constable and constable and little touches of light here you could use your smaller brush and add more light details to that okay all kinds of ways you can add these clouds and they're fun to play and practice they're just fun and so I have a nice shadow a little deeper shadow of my lights right through here where I'll have my light gets a little deeper shadow right through there there you have a whole cloud done like that six minutes you can do it it's a lot of fun once you start to understand it and see it you can do it you can paint faster and don't play with it and uh playing with it you make it all okay then you have to go right back to your blue and start again but you can do that as well okay now the nice let's go take a look at the top next one of my favorite tools to paint with is the knife and I love it just because it gives such an answer like I said before natural variations to it let's take a look at it now again I put down the paint and is the consistency of the paint on the surface that makes them easy to paint or difficult to paint so if you're having difficulty change the consistency of your paint change the amount of your paint if you are coming from acrylics you're used to put you're probably used to using really thin bottled acrylics and when we paint with these techniques the paint needs to be a little stiffer on the surface you can put it on thin and then just walk away go have a cup of coffee come back when it gets a little sticky and that will help but to paint to really have a lot of control to your painting you need to have a certain amount of resistance in the paint that allows you get gives you more time to work things if the paint is too liquid there's no resistance and it just flows all together and you have less control so you want to have a certain amount of resistance that comes from the paint being a little stiff putting on lots of paint and sometimes also more difficult because every time you put something on it disappears that tells you you have too much okay so vary the consistency and like I said everyone is different everyone's hands different so the amount that you put on the surface is the key to learning how to do everything correctly all right so I have a knife this is a this is a painting knife okay the painting knife has this little Z bend in it like this that keeps your hand out of it this means you can use the knife very flat like this onto the surface okay as you drag through as you can see I have paint I have nice wet paint onto this surface here okay now when I go to do it I think a cloud same thing I reach down here I'm going to grab a dollop of white let's take it down here let's just grab some of this and let's just put a thin coat of it here first just to get the feel of it a nice thin drag your mic through so you get a nice thin there's not a lot of texture on it a nice thin coat on to it and let's just set it down in here and see what it does you can see right there I get this beautiful little feel to it now a lot of times I like to do this I like to put my finger there for a little bit of support to help keep that very flat and you can see I get this beautiful especially as it runs out of paint I get this beautiful draggy look and just really sheer look to the to the knife there so what is happening here whoops let's go in just a little bit more what is happening here and you can see the Blues picking up on the knife but I'm holding this really flat like this onto that surface pushing it down and I'm modeling it together now if you push too much you'll blend it all to one color so you want to push and move and push and move as you go in the knife I'm going to wipe this I'm going to pick up right over here a little bit more color okay I'm going to come right down in here and I'm going to push this tip down here and we're just going to come across here and add a little bit more now where I have it right here where I see a lot I'm just going to walk the knife in like this and just work that up and work it over to the edge and come down like this just work that edge and then I like to smear it a little bit like this so what it does is it gives you a completely different see it's a softer look to the club here so we'll grab this and we'll grab some edges here and we can push up edges to this we can work in small little touches small little curves you can work small curves like this you can work the knife flat like this and put the bottom sides of clouds in some artists will take it just on the tip like this and start to work little little edges like this to give more refined edges or a little more interest and movement to the cloud here like this okay so you get this just definitely a different type of look and feel to that and it build a build of the cloud like right up into this area you're building that cloud quite a bit and you can build some more I could pick up just with the tip of the knife like that and build some more right right up in here so I build a layer to these clouds like this okay I can then push the knife flat which causes that almost that blending of it and pushes that down then I can pull and shape and pull pull the cloud down here like this and so it's that I can use the knife and just pull like this pull those edges down and get some movement like this to it like that okay so I'm pulling like this and that gives that movement to it so it's a very very different look to the cloud itself here now if this is what you know you can see does edges just it does beautiful edges and pulls down like this beautiful movement to your clouds like that but you can come in like this and do these beautiful little stabs and edges like constable constable does you know almost call them Constance again constable touch so you should changes me here we pull this through and you can you can combine your fingers up and look at the beautiful looks that you can get here to your closet and again you can put on thick layers you know more thick white layer down like this if you want this to be a cloud layer that comes like this let's say here like that right in there like that and so you can get so many different looks too to your to your clock you can add the shadows in there exactly the same type of ways you can take some of your shadow color let's all push right into here and we can come in and we can push that shadow right into here wiggle it and push the knife very slack to cause some blending of it of that shadow in there you can tap the knife slightly to get some textures that works very well we'll put a little more shadowy color right in here small taps and works you can use the knife very flat to blend small taps to add little textures and movements to it like this so this would be the shadow side of the cloud right there we have a little bit of light and drag a little bit of that light over that edge of the cloud to set that shadow inside the cloud there like that so you can get all kinds of different movements and stuff here with this with this knife it's it's it's really nice and it's very very different consistencies is very important today trying to use it very thick try to use it a you know a little bit at a time use the knife and I call it burnishing pushing down and burnishing the little cloud like this burnishing that in and then to use the knife small light little touches of it I can pick up just a little bit if I want to get more towards constable and come in here and hit little areas like this then already hit and miss with the little cloud like this and create beautiful beautiful little see the movement is quite a bit different than that of the brush and so and the feeling is different so you can tap it around in there a little bit and get a whole different type of movement or feel to that cloud there like that some of that nice soft movements out like that so a total different feel look to it with the knife now we're going to come we'll come back up bring out the big board here and I'll paint some of the shadows up into the clouds a little bit more more of an early morning or evening type of thing you'll get the luminosity that we want to end okay can we just minute when we were best okay with this less with that we have here on the on this DVD I'm going to show you a little bit of luminosity some of the dark clouds will put put a couple clouds together okay how you going to pay I'm going to reach over and I'm going to use probably all the tools that I have and we'll talk a little bit about why I'm using it one where I have a little bit bigger board this time I put my same colors that are out here and I put a little dark there's colors wet okay put a little dark up here at the top all the way grading down to some light I'm going to come in and let's just put let's just start a scene let's just say I'm going to put in like a morning early morning or late evening here I'm going to and usually I would start on a light canvas with a little bit of yellow on to the surface but I since the Heritage is so powerful I'm just going to add it in right now I'm going to take a little my fusion like this and I'm just going to whisper and some of the light color some hunter yellow and some white here just notice I use the brush very flat and I'm going to use it I'm going to say okay my son my sunrise clouds are going to be right in here right in this area right here like this maybe down jetting down here towards the horizon line let's just say our horizon line is going to be right here and I'll suggest maybe I'll suggest that horizon line a little green and a little dark right here right now we'll just kind of suggest just a quick little suggestion these are supposed to be simple techniques and but I love painting like this for you to show you some of this because I loved when I was able to see it and it just process it's a process you're going to learn to see it it's like I was teaching clouds the other day to some students and I was sorry and her plows were a little confused and I said I can't find the clouds in here it's like you're just putting colors down what you're seeing close but you're not saying here's your clouds and so you know then after I set down this okay this is a cloud this is what you do she saw it completely and completely changed the way you're painting so it's nothing you can't do it you got a and it's a process to process a try and trial and error and learning to see and see and that's why I said it's a very beginning of this DVD watch this again please because that's going on every time you watch that you know we're a little more and see it a little bit more as you look at Bierstadt's paintings and stuff go on the internet look at bierstadt look at moran look at constable and some of the Dutch masters and look at that okay look at the beautiful look that you get real quick in here like this with um you know just that quick application of those particular lights and stuff and this we have it now let's come in and let's focus just a little bit of that light like maybe that's going to sit right down in here like that and just quickly let's just drag some of that out just a little hit some this is a little areas of that area here so it's going to lighten up right up through here we'll let it the clouds start to come up here onto the this yellow this nice warm yellow I might carry a little bit of that up into the sky here before it starts because it's a nice dawn morning and my carry up and fade away back up in here like this so we'll just drag that through like that okay drag this through nice morning clouds here drag this through try not to play too much because you lose that instant brush interest that you get into the painting here okay now let's say okay let's start to find some other clouds now are you going to find those clouds are you gonna find those classes a couple ways you can do it you can sit there and find the clouds first with a light okay which you can do maybe some of the clouds that are back up in here up at the top you may because their sin you may find them with the light right away so we'll start some thin light clouds like right up in here just drag this brush and just say ever so light thin light little clouds right here okay and let's just push that a little bit clearer okay I have a little bit of that movement push that just bit Craig that now you could also you know grab that with a knife and burnish that with a knife and drag them through like that she's a different look that you'll get there each one of these would be a little different drag that with the knife right there like that that'll give you a little different look to those clouds there okay to the top here so each one bristle will give you more you know look how much interest do you want to have these little guys out here are they going to want to have in your painting how much you're going to give that okay so like that and you've only got so long to play with this while this background is wet sticky you know so you got to move now if you have to do it again you can go to the Ducks technique and say I'm going to come in and and glaze it again so you can you know get some of your initial movement on like this and then put a light coating of the blue back on and work it again you can do that but I love doing this with the acrylic as opposed to the oils because the acrylic does dry I don't need hours and weeks to play these clouds I can make my clouds here very pretty very very quickly okay and I don't need hours to make those so you know I want this to get sticky and want it to get sticky pretty quickly so because that's I don't need that much time so I had that that look right in there now so I can put those lights in there like that next I can come back and we can do just like a constable or something I can come in there with some dark color like this let's get into some of our purples here a nice cool color purple here maybe a touch of black and does that get that Glade in there but of course you know he's going to vary his colors quite a bit let's get some of that gray let's grab some of this and drop that in get these Gray's in here and this will be the shadow side of clouds so you actually are going to make the clouds here that the clouds right like this you're going to be making them with dark this time okay so the clouds will come in here like this into the dark tear like this put some of that in there like that let that run right into that light there yeah maybe let these get a little wispy right up here like this as well because you'll have light and dark running together up in here as well there like that hey lil bit up over here remember my little cloud I picture I took you know in the evening not in front of my house one little cloud it gives you a nice look to that looking for that and let's just let's grab this and let's say okay the light is going to come right through here so I'm going to take this light down right back through here like this and drag this along here maybe I take some of this with the knife here and drag it just move some of that together like that okay beautiful look to that bearing that a bit maybe give just let this put a little stroke like this and did just streak it through let that pull that yellow down and streak that down and through there a bit and like that so I have this let's push some more dark let's get a little more of our violet blue and red violet a little bit of black here a little bit darker and let's push a little more dark contrast up into this side of the cloud the top side of the cloud since the lights below there so let's just drop that in the lights below so we'll pull that in through there like that okay that's the dark side back to there a little bit of this through you know going out and taking pictures and stuff it really helps a lot to find some of these beautiful things as nice inspiration Freddie you can paint as you understand it the light is going to come here from below and so the dark part of my clouds move at the top how much contrast I'm going to allow that to have it's got to be my decision right now is I can come in here and I can just tap through into that and soften that out just a bit soften that edge of that cloud still leave a little bit of that shadow movement you know how much I'm going to let sit in there is going to be my decision now you know to make let's bring in a little bit of that coming in from this side over here into the back right back there like that okay and we'll let some of that to streak back here just pick up a little bit of those color streaking bow back through here just do like that and let's just treat those together like that okay now how much you know are you going to streak some of that up through here let this fade away up in through here you know how much you're going to let this you know go off and come up here to the side here like this put a little cloud right up over here let's put a little more red into that red violet into this one softer a little cloud maybe it comes right in there like that okay maybe a little right out here and up into that so the light is coming back up to here the likes here the Sun still below the horizon but it's popping up through some of this and there is because of the angle of this right here it's there's some pretty dark stuff right here I'm gonna the horizon line here okay like that just like that now we'll come in and we can start some of the luminosity of it maybe the luminosity we'll take a small little bristle brush here okay and to start some of this luminosity let's get a little bit of our our yellow out here like this let's get some of our white out here like this maybe we want to have an orange II kind of color so we'll grab some of that red that nice warm red Hunza and natural red light makes these beautiful light kind of orange saw a little soft orange there I don't want a deep and real bright orange my daughter Jessica would like a bright orange I don't care for one right now and so I'm just going to come in and let's just tap the edge of these clouds here bottom edge of this cloud and that edge here let's put in the luminosity or the edge of this cloud let me come in a little closer here okay and we'll take this little corner of this just drag that in here say there's the little luminescent edge of that cloud and you see Bear Stafford is you see all really all of the little landscape painters when you start to really understand cloud they'll say huh let's put a little luminescence right into here drag a little bit of that right there let's just drag that across that cloud right there hey write it down like that okay drag it right to this little spots of that maybe a little bit of it hitting here and there into the clouds hey drag a little bit of that drag a little spot of that there's another part of the cloud create a little bit through the scene select all this not only picking up on the cloud top side of the cloud this time top side of this one opens that up and I'll show you where the light is coming through yeah so the lights coming through here it hits bottom side it's the top side or is it going to hit over here so going to hit this side here or down here because this is the light you're going to say that right now and you're going to say it's going to come right here and see that's going to support the light that I'm showing right there drop that car in and we'll let that fade away here over to the side maybe a little bit up into it just a bit like my like my little cloud the little cloud study I did a little bit of that up in here just because I add some more interest and there may be a little bit more defined right in there let's make a little bit more yellow in light right in there so it's a little bit lighter yet right into that area and see that little bristle because little taps little interesting taps of color here you can add a little more lights and shines to that little edges lights and shines maybe you know ever so light that just a tick you're here 1g color soften it up just a bit little touches of it to the top sides of some of your clouds so like it's a cloud is peeking through a bit yeah it gets into the actual you know details of it how much of this is going to show through here into that's what picks up into this light just work some of those colors around you see you create this this illusion of light and dark and this is what makes you know sky is so beautiful I'm going to come back and reset a little more dark take a little black and a little bit of violet color nice purpley dark don't want it too much so I'm just going to push that around a little bit I like that that dark and you know you get to a constable and stuff he would really make it like a lot of contrast out there here and I'm not that much of a high contrast painter so you know sometimes I feel sometimes I won't it's hard for me to do that but I do enjoy the look of it but it's more difficult because I don't like a lot of contrast but you know those that like to paint will love the evening seems you might really get into that we might get a little bit of that softer gray into that so I'm adding now looking at it and coming in and just adding but I'm watching the shapes of my little clouds that's a little clouds going to have a little light side it's going to have a little shadow side so this might have a little light side right there to that little cloud it's like there as part of that and so you pick up just a little bit of the light just touch right over here towards this light even though it's a gray it's still a light yeah we had just a little bits of that through there and you'll start to pick up some of the look of you know what a beautiful sky goes you know how to paint a beautiful sky you know when you might drag some of this up softly up into the cloud you know what up in here with the little bristle looks great you get those little bit of sub movement to it a softness in the brush that I'm in their beautiful little skies here a little bit of this gray softer gray you can add a little touches of that up in here into the sky maybe little touches of that 1g color just beginning the hit every once in a while up in here some of these edges here of these guys there's light because they're thin and wispy so I have little touches of the light just up the Sun that's rising see there like that so you make a nice rise in there let's take a little bit of our grain of violets here so your horizon would be right down here like this you know maybe it has a nice just be your horizon area here right there like that a little bit of soft gray and up against that horizon so the rise and be darker darker edge then what's going on there maybe a little bit of the violet coming through you are going to make a nice sunrise type thing through the clouds there and so you would let's take a little bit of our black and green and violet there and really put a bit more so a little more depth to this horizon here let's look yes can you pull this down that you can see you will get this just some color pulling in through here this is land of coming down through here like this some other colors here and closer to get darker and stuff as it comes forward and stuff but you would see like an evening or horizon I like this is or sunrise on an evening set this is what it would do would soften the edges of those a bit back there and so you get some of your feeling of it coming up through the sky up like this thing and um anything that you want really really soft you can use that fusion brush like this okay very very soft if you want to get you know this is very very small imagine if I did it up big how much more color work I can do it and we've done this whole painting here in less than 15 minutes so you can once you understand and some of the working and how some of this stuff goes on you can paint this and and look at putting light colors in with dark colors look at the clouds you know next time you go outside look at the cluster look at a dark one sit in front of a light one where's that dark one in position study where the light is coming on that your job is the artist is to then capture that feeling of it you'll have to copy it you have to capture capture feeling of it it's a lot of fun clouds are fun to paint you have three major tools give your bristle you have your fusion any of your life and each one of those will give it slightly different edges different looks to it okay and they're fun and you can do streaky movements with the knife you can go in there tap little edges combining them all together Kizza gives a movement to your sunrise or sunset here that is pretty incredible and if this was all in a painting here and we narrowed this rag on down to a painting that would be pretty nice in a painting it will put the whole sky into that that'd be a pretty nice look into a painting here and this is a 15-minute set for a 15-minute sunrise okay you could add more lights or colors to this let's just say I wanted to put more of a sunrise look into it or something like that you can add more of your oranges and stuff back back in here if I took just a soft brush and added some more of my oranges right in through here like this this would really give you a set or feeling of the horizon or the light let's get a little four let's get a little Hansa let's open this up like this is really coming in the Sun is really coming up in here like this it's beautiful but now you have a scene now you have a scene here that it's very difficult in that the clouds and stuff in this sunrise is taken over a lot of the painting here so you know the interest of the painting just because the volume and stuff of the light in it there is quite a bit so we can just streak that back and forth like that a bit and push these lights and darks together like this like that and that just gives you a beautiful set of interest there of lights and darks and colors and stuff to use with it I hope you enjoyed it I had a great time it hopefully gives you an idea of how to do some simple little clouds simple little effects look at the cloud for shape look at this light look at this through light and going through the shadow a little bit of slightly lighter shadow colors which we call the form shadow give it in form okay and look at different ways to give the texture so that to that particular pilot look for a side that is more built up look for size that flies away remember that you know any good painting has movement to it so it's good to add a lot commit to it okay and have a lot of fun painting look for more of our technique DVDs and we're going to be painting a lot of sunrises and sunsets with you and some other in some more advanced clouds and then I have some that's coming I have one that's already done on trees I have something I'm coming on rocks and some of they're coming on water so we have a lot more to paint together okay hope you enjoy a great time painting with you and I'll see you next time here to janssen art studio didn't paint applause I'll see you later bye-bye

Channel: Paint It Simply

Views: 3,569

Keywords: Paint It Simply, Decorative Painting, how to paint, learn to paint, acrylic paint, online art class, beginner lesson, painting flowers, drawing, Arts Crafts, oil painting, blending, one stroke, one brush, easy painting, onestroke, painting roses, Bob Ross, alla prima, Fine Art, landscape painting, artist, how to paint rose, Rosemaling

Id: 1AYciQLdxd0

Length: 142min 51sec (8571 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 14 2017