Blue sky thinking . . . .

In our recently formed “zoom” art group, and as I have mentioned previously, we have been taking it in turns to set ourselves a little challenge. The latest was to think about different “skies” in landscape and to try and produce three contrasting pictures. Below are my efforts (from photos I took myself for reference purposes), all done very quickly. The one that caused me real problems was the “rainbow” picture and I spent much longer faffing with it. I had used cheap practice paper for these sketches and I couldn’t get the transparent effect I wanted. The surface of the paper was breaking up and I over worked the whole thing . It was a useful exercise though and I will be better prepared if I approach this subject again. Not that I can see me rushing to paint another rainbow!

A bright summer’s day with cumulus cloud building.

A dramatic cloud-filled sunset. The colours so bright they hardly seem real, but it was very dramatic at the time. I pulled over in the car to a lay-by to snap this sunset scene one evening back last autumn.

I took this reference photo Just up the lane above the house as the storm was moving away from me with the middle ground coming back in to bright sunshine.

The last sketch was one I did from a royalty free stock photo. Rain clouds over mountains. I did it in literally five minutes wet in wet using two colours; Payne’s grey and violet. This I thought was quite effective.

An infinitely changing subject . . . . with infinite possibilities in representation……… plenty to think about.