Painting Clouds On An Orange Background

With the next Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shevat not for another 27 days, I am trying to spend as much time as possible painting, either in my sketchbook, or not. This week I got back into exploring how to paint clouds, an idea I had started working on a whole year ago, but just didn’t get back to it. And then I painted some llamas with tiny cranes flying overhead, and then I painted some cranes, and then I realized that painting clouds was the natural thing to paint next! So, I painted one spread of clouds that isn’t all that great, and then I painted this spread, which I do love, and so I’m sharing it with you. I’ll say, after this one I painted another three spreads of clouds, and while it was challenging, it was so great to actually work on painting one thing! Now I need to try it on large sheets of watercolor paper, or dare I say a canvas? The biggest question of all when thinking about painting clouds should be what color background shall I paint them on? And friends, I suggest you try a few options to see what works for you, though I can guarantee you that orange is a winner. it need not be as intense an orange as you can see here peaking through, but orange of some kind as it just gives that oh so painterly look to your work, which I personally love. Want to see the entire painting? Keep on reading…..

Some folks might think that painting an entire canvas orange in order to paint over most of it is silly, but not at all, as those tiny bits of orange peeking through give the painting an interest and a depth that is invaluable!

So, prime your paper/canvas with orange tinted gesso, or paint your ground color an orange of some kind, or how about a ground with a few oranges, now that sounds great to me, gotta go try that!