Five Tips For Big, Atmospheric Skies

Five Tips for Big, Atmospheric Skies

As landscape painters, we know that painting skies and clouds can be challenging! Creating a sense of air, atmosphere and “bigness” in our skies is what we are after. Here are five tips to remember when you are painting skies:

• Remember that the sky is a vault, which curves behind, over and in front of the viewer. Avoid repetitive horizontal brushwork or cloud formations that tend to make the sky look more like a “backdrop” than a vault. This will add a sense of “bigness” to your skies.
• Gradations of value and color (see illustration above) will add both realism and atmosphere to your skies.
• Use both atmospheric and linear perspective in your skies and cloud formations.
• Compose with the idea of movement in mind.
• Remember to visually tie the sky and the groundplane together with overlapping forms, color and design.

Keep these tips in mind and you are on your way to painting big, atmospheric skies!

P.S. Want to know more? Our online course The Painted Sky is now available On Demand!