Exercise: Cloud formations and tone

MEDIA: Charcoal pencils, rubbing materials, white paper

METHOD: Quick mark making with pencils, shading with finger and rubbing materials and highlighting with putty rubber

REFLECTIONS:

• Using pencils was not giving me enough surface to work loosely with or get the thicker marks I wanted
• This, particularly having to draw quickly
• I timed myself as I usually get lost in trying to get detail and this made me work quicker
• Extremely difficult to do this on a windy day in particular 🙂 clouds just merged and opened up in seconds

MEDIA: pastel, putty rubber, white paper

METHOD: Used long sides of short pastels, layering from lighter to darker colours and using putty rubber or finger to highlight or blend

REFLECTIONS:

• Definltey easier to fill paper and forms quicker and more smoothly while trying to capture shapes from the moving sky with pastels
• Was attracted to this rectangular strip of cloud in the sky which was a bit unusual
• used putty rubber to lift parts for wispy white parts in the blue sky, this worked much better than previous one by being looser and letting the rubber come on and off the paper as I moved it around while still trying to keep my eye on the sky
• I am not sure it has the depth I could have wanted and perhaps needed more tone for it

MEDIA: black and grey pastel on white paper

METHOD: Trying black and grey pastel layering using the sides again and finger to rub on white paper

RELFECTIONS:

• I wanted to take a part of the sky that was more stormy and so used black and grey
• This time I wanted to capture the overlap of round bits of cloud where clear distinction was but also the soft edges melting into each other which made it so interesting which I think is easier working in monotone than in colour
• This came out a bit granular due to the grain of the paper but depending on what you were doing the texture could work well which I do like, though it was less fluffy and light as a cloud but this makes sense also for a more stormy look

MEDIA: Light blue heavy grained paper and coloured pastels

METHOD: Using short edges and corners of pastel this time to build the white cloud on top of subtler layers using the sides of the patel

REFLECTIONS:

• I wanted to capture one sole cloud with wispy parts around in the background – it was strange as there was a lot ot cloud in the background that was just monotone with only blue bits of sky coming out but then a much closer puffy cloud so this had more depth and with more defined mark making, a bit more movement also
• Textured paper has a nice effect but again maybe didn’t help the softness of the cloud but this would depend on the effect desired anyway
• It was hard to get the nice shapes and roundedness of this when doing it quickly

MEDIA: Water colour pencil, water colour paper and brushes and water

METHOD: Building off the above application of more clearly defined mark making, I started with scribbly lines of water colour pencil and then used water and brushes to blend and then go again over with line to get a more cartoonish movement. Combined this with subtler blue peeping out by applying water first then water colour paint.

REFLECTIONS:

• The pencils are quite hard so the lines came out sketchy which is what I wanted but perhaps I was expected it to be subtler though I like the messy movement it brings, particularly when I usually don’t use this style
• I think it could have captured better depth of the rolling layers
• was trying to capture the rolling layers going into the distance with the shadows at the bottom and having more time I could have perhaps applied a more aerial atmosphere to it

MEDIA: Acrylic paint on water colour paper directly with paintbrushes

METHOD: First applied horizontal mark making of layers of paint for a smoother look and then harsher and quicker paint brush marks with more paint, working on white paper and leaving white for the highlights

REFLECTIONS:

• Acrylic is good for blending and layers and playing around with brush strokes so that helped
• I was not convinced by the blended background as as much as it wasn’t exactly straight but then it also helps give more movement
• Perhaps adding pastel on top would have helped build more tone and depth as this feels the flattest experiment yet

MEDIA: Acrylic, watercolour paper and brushes

METHOD: This time I tried to be bolder with smaller and layers brush strokes and mark making that was looser with more movement, combined with using bigger brushes for patches of clear sky or block colour

REFLECTIONS:

• Leaving white strips of cloud with bare paper and blending the colours in parts with more water helped contrast the cloud with the sky
• Dont think I captured the shape well enough on this, its probably the one that looks least like a cloud but I captured the colours well by bringing grey tones into the blue

MEDIA: Inks on water colour paper and water

METHOD: I decided to try to let colour run in water by applying water in patches first and adding inks and then more water and inks to darken and layer

REFLECTIONS:

• I didnt have all the colours I needed but the blue black and purple were good for stormy dark clouds and the colour saturation came out a bit more surreal but I really liked it
• This seems to take me to more abstract and it felt more like I was inspired by the sky rather than trying to replicate it exactly, particularly given how I couldn’t predict how the ink would settle in the watery parts
• I used smaller paintbrushes this time and then dragged them across also to merge water and different ink colours and I think it helped bring more unity and complexity to the cloud
• I quite like the mix of softness of ink with the hectic mark making to create layers of cloud

MEDIA: Inks and water colour paper again

METHOD: Adding water with paintbrushes around the forms I could see in the cloud then dropping ink rather than using paintbrushes

REFLECTIONS:

• By building wet and dry areas first and then dropping ink I managed to get a fluffier lighter look of yet another patch of sky
• Melding lighter colours into the main forms of the cloud and letting the water edges and colours define themselves was a lot of fun
• I then also moved the water around with a paintbrush rather than adding ink from the paintbrush and this gave me more flexibility with the ink already on the paper
• Really like how this turned out as you can get soft and hard edges as you often see with the clouds

MEDIA: Used a photo and pastel, conte crayons and finger rubbing

METHOD: I just wanted to try a small landscape out from a photo I took that I remembered I took on my travels of this big massive cloud over some islands in the west. I tried out some pastel an

REFLECTIONS:

• The big massive grey cloud was gorgeous and darker at one end and below yet there was light coming through over the land and reflected in the sea, I wanted to try to capture that and the heaviness of the cloud underneath with the shadow and how it came up into fluffy white at the top
• I still timed myself 6 minutes and this was a challenge!
• I used my finger to rub pastel and lighten with putty rubber to get the lightness of certain areas and then applied more pastel layer or line directly where there were sharper aspects – which I think worked well.
• This worked really well for the sky part and then i used conte crayons for the land and sea to get more contrast and definition since they are finer and easier to get straighter lines etc with and added a bit of blue and purple in the sea
• This took me back to try to be precise and copy something exactly and away from the most abstract I was doing before and I think the only reason is because I was using a specific photo and it knocked me back into realism!

Some general reflections

• Great exercise for force me to work with speed and loosely since I am often challenges with getting lost in detail
• Getting movement in cloud is not easy! though the loser I tried to keep my mark making the more organic it was and the more I enjoyed it also
• Think it was more successful with pastels and in inks than the other media- for my own taste anyway.