Tutorial: Painting Clouds

In this post, we’ll be painting some fluffy clouds. Clouds are great for practicing your skills and are pretty forgiving subjects in terms of shape. They’re also a lot of fun to make! For this tutorial, I’ll be building on the idea of blending presented earlier and also introduce the idea of using highlights and shadows to create some dimension. I’ll be using the gradient sky from the last video, so be sure to check that out first if you would like to follow along! Otherwise, painting a solid blue sky would work just as well as a base to build some clouds on.

Understanding Shapes

The good thing about clouds is they are fairly amorphous and can look like just about any kind of blobby mass while still reading as a cloud. That being said, there are a few things to consider when thinking about cloud shapes. Something I would often witness while working with new painters is the tendency to revert to notions of clouds from childhood and paint something like this:

There’s certainly nothing wrong with that per say, but if you’re goal is to create clouds that appear a bit more realistic, it’s important to remember to avoid the more abstracted or symbolic representations of elements. Without looking at a source, these simplified representations tend to be what we think of. The best way to avoid this common pitfall is to use reference images.

Reference Images

Generally, the first thing I do when considering painting something, before any kind of preliminary sketches or painting whatsoever, is spend a fair amount of time on Google or elsewhere collecting images. A reference image (or images) aren’t only useful when you plan on making a carbon copy of an image and a very helpful for getting a general sense of shapes as they really appear. A quick Google search of clouds will give you a ton of results to work from. If you are just starting out, you may find it easiest to find an image of clouds to copy directly, or you can use a few to get an idea of some general shapes to base your own from. Clouds come in an infinite variety of shapes, but you will definitely see some similarities in the basic forms that can help you turn some blobs into believable clouds.

For this tutorial, I picked some simple fluffy cloud shapes to demonstrate. While they are removed from the sort of clipart clouds that our brains like to default to, they are still fairly generic in shape. These types of thick fluffy clouds do appear in nature, however, and you’ll see similar cloud shapes represented in many paintings, so this is a good place to start. After more practice, you can try to represent more complex and wispy cloud shapes, but these simple forms are pretty versatile and I’ve used similar cloud shapes in my own paintings.

Things to Consider

For what I’ll be demonstrating, here are a few things that are helpful to keep in mind as you are building cloud shapes:

• Think of the basic shape as a lumpy mountain or mound of mashed potatoes. It is fairly triangular in form with a distinct high point and tapers off at the edges. The bottom, while still lumpy, is more straight across.
• Be sure to let some shapes trail off the edges of the canvas. This gives the impression that the image continues beyond the edges and will look more realistic. You don’t want to box your shapes into the frame of your canvas.
• Try to vary the size/shape of your cloud edges. Making several shapes of roughly the same size and shape will make your image look patterned and less realistic.
• Add some long, linear shapes between larger, dense cloud shapes to add more variety.

Cloud Painting Tutorial

Colors

If you would like to follow along with the basic shapes and color tones I demonstrate in the video below, you will need titanium white, pthalo blue, cadmium yellow, and quinacridone magenta. The four color tones I used to build these clouds are light purple, light peach, light yellow, and white. Here is a breakdown of the color used:

• Light purple tone: 3 scoops white, 1 scoop magenta, half scoop blue
• Light peach tone: 3 scoops white, 1 scoop magenta, half scoop yellow
• Light yellow: 3 scoops white, 1 scoop yellow
• Pure white

Be sure to give yourself enough paint to work with and adjust the colors as you see fit. Or, try out your own color combinations! Just remember to keep your paints wet so you can avoid having to remix colors.

A Few Tips

Building these clouds will require a lot of back and forth and adjustments. Here are some tips that can make this process a bit easier:

• Use a brush appropriate for the size of the shape. You’ll see in the video I bounce between a large flat brush for large shapes, a small flat brush for small shapes, and a small round brush to define some edges. Experiment with different brushes and see what works for you!
• Try doing some finger painting to help you blend and soften edges.
• Thoroughly clean brushes between colors. As you move between say, purple and peach, you want to be sure your brush is clean so you won’t muddy up the paint.
• Blend between colors while the paint is still wet to soften transitions. But be careful not to over blend and end up with one solid color! Allow colors to dry a bit if you experience over blending.
• Focus lightest colors (light yellow, white) at top edges for highlights, and darkest colors (light purple) on the undersides and between layered areas for shadows.
• Try standing back from your painting occasionally and squinting your eyes to blur your vision slightly. It sounds strange, but this can help you better see how colors are interacting and levels of contrast.
• Remember, you can always adjust things once the paint dries! You’ll see I do just that several times in the video. Building on layers of paint is especially effective for creating dimension.

Video Tutorial

Now it’s time to get painting! Take a look at the video to see how these clouds were created. A breakdown of the steps is offered below so you can jump around to see specific steps as needed.

Steps:

1. Use peach tone to build basic cloud shapes
2. Use purple tone to start building shadow areas below clouds and to add layers within clouds for depth
3. Blend in shadows with more peach tone
4. Add light yellow tone to cloud edges to create highlights
5. Refine shapes and tones with more blending between colors
6. Refine cloud edges with a small round brush
7. Continue to refine shapes and adjust tones to your liking
8. Add brightest highlights to edges with a small amount of pure white

Painting clouds is a great way to practice blending techniques and using highlights and shadows. I encourage you to find some references and try out some new shapes and color tones. As with any other subject, the more you practice, the easier it gets!