 Hey guys, welcome to my studio today. I'm actually going to be sitting down to paint a little table easel. Sometimes I like to do that, but today it's a little more specifically to be able to watch out my window here. I have this wonderful view just so you know. This is the house that was a temporary home for us after the flooding of our home in 2017. And now the home we're living in is too small for me to have an art studio. So we still have this home available, thank you Jesus, for me to keep this studio in the house. And it's only about five minutes from my other place that I'm living now. But I came to really love my neighbors who are cows. And I have this great view out my window here, and not only do I love looking at them and feeding them, they've become my best friends. But one of them, Oreo, my favorite. She looks like she's about to have a baby any day. So I'm kind of keeping my eye out for her. That's going to be exciting. And if the baby's born, we got like five babies born in the past few weeks, so they're all adorable. But I'll try to share some pictures whenever that wonderful event happens. So anyway, today I'm going to be doing a painting on clouds. I realize I love painting clouds, and I don't think I have another cloud video. I have videos with clouds in them where I've done paintings with some clouds in them. But none specifically talking about painting clouds. So I'm going to give that a shot today and see, you know, hopefully I'm doing some clouds of actually one of the fields that's right out here that I took at sunset. Oh, and also I'm wearing my Monet Cafe apron today. And I often forget to wear it because I'm usually just wearing an old t-shirt or something. But I had a shirt on, I didn't want to mess up, and it's white. So if you want one of these aprons, I'll try to put a link. I do have them available. So they're really nice. They have pockets. They have like three pockets here, and they're nice quality. You can wash them and draw them, and they come out just great. So anyway, enough self-promoting, right? Let's get to it. Now as I was saying, I have lots of paintings with clouds in them. And contrary to what our minds think sometimes, clouds aren't always white. They come in multiple colors, shapes, sizes, and yes, sometimes they can be the white wispy clouds that we often think of. Often I like my clouds to just kind of blend in, you know, such as in this painting. It was just kind of a cloudy, hazy day. But sometimes I like them to be the star of the show. And that's pretty much the focus of this painting that I'll be doing today. Here are a couple of progress shots, but you're going to see the full video. Clouds have shape like anything else. They behave three-dimensionally like any other object with shadows and values. And pretty much every other artistic principle applies to clouds. So let's get started and learn a little bit more, some tips and techniques for painting clouds. The surface I'm going to be using for this painting is Sennelier, made by Sennelier, a French company. And it's called La Carte Pastel, pastel card. The reason it's called pastel card is it's a little thicker, okay? It's kind of got some nice thickness to it. This is a sanded surface that this particular pad is, what did I say? It was like a 9 by 12 or 9 by something like that. These are all in centimeters. But anyway, it comes in different colors in this particular pad. They do make a larger pad. I have the larger one here, okay? So I've been painting a little bit smaller, usually no bigger than 11 by 14 just here lately. But anyway, I like this paper specifically with the Sennelier pastels. They also make soft pastels. But with really any pastel, this is just a nice really gritty surface. You definitely get good layers. And for me, it creates a really impressionistic feel. I don't know what it is. Maybe I just work differently on it. But I really like the results of this paper. And I thought it would be nice for the clouds. I also particularly like this kind of neutral gray-green, almost like a seafoam green. But I think it's a nice medium value. You know, I've got a lot of light colors. It wouldn't be good to start with a white surface when you're working on with white clouds. So this is going to help me to establish my values better by working on a medium value surface. So let's get started getting this sketched in. So now I've just got a harder new pastel in you pastel. These are great for sketching. Great for getting in darker values. And they're smaller to where you can actually sketch with them, okay? You get kind of an edge to them. So I'm just going to kind of sketch this in. I may lift my board up a little bit. No, I can do it from here. Okay, so just looking at big shapes, all right? A big mass, I also try to kind of measure according to the proportion. I see that this cloud starts in this upper corner. And it goes past the halfway mark down here, okay? So it's going to start here and it's going to go here. And it goes almost to the point of this part is almost to the middle of the iPad. So, you know, if you haven't done a lot of sketching and you want to kind of give yourself a guide, sometimes you can make midway marks, you know, where you don't have to measure them after a while. And then you kind of at least have an idea. Nothing has to be too specific with things like clouds and fields and flowers and stuff like that. As long as you get the general perspective, right? Okay, so I know this cloud is going to come down. And I'm just kind of, sometimes I do masses, sometimes I kind of do sketches. So then I've got this little part of the cloud here. You get the idea. I'm just going to sketch a little bit here. Okay, that's really all you need. You don't need a whole lot. You certainly don't want to get too overly detailed at the beginning stages because all it is is a guide. I just want to know kind of where the clouds are because my other colors and values are going to establish that more. And again, I want to keep that loose energy going. So now I'm going to get actually from my last video where I put together my travel pastel box, a Hyaluron box. If you haven't seen that video, it's a great way to know how to get pastel organization and storage. And I'm going to use that for the first time that I've filled it up and put it in my box. So that should be fun. It's kind of a test to make sure it's a good working travel palette with the correct colors and values for painting, you know, whatever when you're out on the road. Now, here's my pastel selection and I got these all out of the Hyaluron pastel box that I put together. So I'll have to put them all back when I'm done, which is easy now because they're also organized. But I wanted to give you a little bit of rationale for my decisions. The sky, I mean, typically someone might decide to paint this whole sky just a pretty blue like that. But this guy is going to have so much more color. That's what makes a painting an eye grabber where people go, Oh, it's the color. It's the play on color. And that's how it works in nature is there's never one color. Everything is always playing off of each other. So the sky is going to have a lot of blue skies are typically darker at the in the heavens up high. And then they gradually get lighter as they go to the horizon line typically. So this guy has got actually I'm seeing some blue blues mixed with this more of a teal blue up in the upper atmosphere playing around getting to some of the middle values and getting to some of the lighter values. But notice I have a little play on warm and cool blues in here. And I think that's going to add interest and it's also going to add perspective depth to and give a little bit of, you know, definitely perspective and atmosphere to it. Now these are going to be some of my shadowy colors for the clouds. I want to get some neutrals in here too. They're not all going to be bright, bold colors because I want some of these colors to really pop on top of those. So these are my shadowy cloud colors. Now these are going to be my brighter cloud colors for where the sun is shining on them. It's got the reference photo has some nice just beautiful warm almost peachy salmon highlights to it. So I've got a warm yellow here. I have one that's a little bit lighter here. Maybe at least it's a little harder pastel. And then I've got some of these even though they look maybe overly bright right now than what's in the photo. They're going to be my little punch to everything. And they're also going to be toned down a little bit. You put them down and then you put some other pastels on top to kind of tone it down a little and blend it in a little. And this is more of my kind of a medium value peachy color. And I really loved this salmon color. I'm getting all dirty now getting my fingers on them. Now the horizon is I mean the land below the horizon line is very dark. But I still want to keep color to it. I don't want to just paint it, you know, one dark color. I mean you could squint your eyes and say, oh, it's about this value in this color. But that's going to be really boring. You want to mix some colors of the same value together to create that energy vibration and just beauty of color working with each other. I've got a nice dark purple here and a nice dark blue. All of those are going to kind of make my immediate foreground. Also I've got this rich green here. Some of these two are going to make my trees. The trees are going to be the darkest thing. So they're not going to get toned down a lot. But some of the foreground, I'm going to actually lay some greens down over at darker greens. Now I do think I'm going to create, my reference photo seems to be a field and trees. I love to create little hidden places, not hidden little interesting places where your eye just goes back. And the way you create that is by lightening up the value, making things lighter in value, duller in color and a smaller obviously as you go back. The trees back here would be smaller. So that's why I'm going to change the trees instead of these dark darks to a little bit of a lighter and cooler. Color temperature makes things recede in the background too. So these are my color choices. I'm going to try real hard not to add anything to this. I think this is more than enough for this painting. I do many paintings, not even using this many. But I think this will keep me from having to get up from my chair. Let's see what we can do with this. Now I'm going to do a voiceover now while I paint and I'm going to see if I can leave that scratchy sound that you can hear when the pastels rub against the Sennelier pastel sanded surface. I happen to just love that part of pastel painting. I think probably if any of you have been painting a little while in pastels you understand. There's something different about it from other mediums. It almost has like an earthy feel, almost like you're sculpting in a way. Maybe it's because you're actually holding the medium in your hand. You don't have a brush or anything in between you and that beautiful color. I don't know. I might be getting a little too crazy here, but I don't know. I just love it. Now I wanted to share here. Notice I put down that darker blue first before I have this one in my hand. It was the cooler blue. Now I'm putting this warmer blue on top of it. You notice how the color just is more energetic now combining those two colors. If you're not familiar with warm versus cool colors, I do have a video on that. I highly recommend getting comfortable to where you just totally understand it. Trust me, I didn't understand it at first. But then somehow after watching someone else's video, it just clicked for me. I was like, oh my goodness, I get it. In my video, I share the color wheel and how warm versus cool color relates to the color wheel. I think that's an excellent way to learn about it. Once you get it, you'll be like, oh, I got it. You don't even have to think about it anymore. But this blue that I'm picking right here, I suddenly realized I had a feeling it was too light. But look, that is way too light. You're going to want your sky to decrease in value or to lighten in value, I should say, from the upper heavens to the horizon line. You don't want any stark gradation there unless you've got a cloud in the way or something else. So I'm trying to make it more subtle. And again, I'm doing a play on the warm versus the cool blues here. And I'm going around the clouds right now just to kind of get the sky in. But later I'm going to talk about some of you may be familiar with the term sky holes that you do in trees. In essence, you make a mass shape of trees and you carve the sky. The sky kind of carves the tree and you make holes behind the tree. Well, you kind of do the same thing with clouds. Instead of drawing the clouds' edges or lines, you create the mass. And later I'll go in with some of the blue sky and make cloud holes, I guess you could say. So you'll notice that at the end. Now I'm purposely looking at the photo to see where do I want the focus of the painting to be. And I know it's obviously going to be that major cloud that's in the right there. And especially the part that has more of the highlights from the sun and that yellowy color. And in that area where I'm painting right now, the sky is lighter. It's like a point of interest right there. So that means even though some of the other values may be about the same in other places in the painting, I may subdue them in color and value a little bit so that my main focus is going to be on that area right there with that cloud and that sky was I was working on there. Alright, so I'll work a little bit here and when I start to get more to the clouds, I'll add some more commentary. Here I wanted to mention where I spoke about earlier on making some depth to these trees. The reference photo, I mean, it's really dark in the foreground and all you see is really a dark line of trees. But I wanted to create some depth and notice that duller, paler blue that I have lighter value. Obviously that I have kind of sneaking behind those trees. It's going to create perspective and a more interesting foreground. Now I'm just really getting my darkest darks down because I'm going to lay it's a pretty dark. It looks actually this was like when the sun was setting. And so it's already starting to get dark. It's that time where the sun really starts to recede quickly. You better get your camera out fast and take a picture. But the foreground was really dark but had some nice warm highlights casting across it because of those clouds above. Often, just like things reflect in water, light from things above reflect on the land. Even clouds, even colors in the clouds can reflect in the land. So I'm kind of getting things down. Also, even that blue right there, I want to, even if you don't see it in your eyes in the photo, you learn these things that if nature behaves that way, you can intensify it a bit to make a more interesting painting and to make it more congruent. Overall, the piece is cohesive and works as a unit rather than colors popping up here and there and not having any color harmony. You know, often having the advantage of watching some of my videos like this, I often, and one day I'm going to learn when to just stop. I wish I had left the foreground more like this instead of focusing more on getting detail into it. So let's take a look here. I want to go ahead and get in some of my lightest values, okay? If I squint my eyes and look at the reference photo. I mean, it is really easy that the lightest light is going to be here. And this is my main star anyway, this cloud. Again, I'm trying to keep a sense of movement. I don't want to get any sharp edges. Clouds don't really have sharp edges. The next in lightness, if I squint my eyes, is there's a little band underneath this cloud where the blue sky comes in here. I need to add more blue in here. There's a little highlight of a white cloud right there, okay? So let me get that blue in there right now. Which one was that blue I used? I think it's a lighter one because it's lower in the horizon. Is that it? That's maybe too light. Yeah, it was darker than that one. Which one was it? Let's see. I might have to combine colors. You know they talk about not being able to blend colors with pastels, but really what you do is you change the color by putting one on top of the other. You know, you can lighten one up or darken one up. So I'm just trying to get a little bit of lightness here. Maybe let's see here. That's a good one because it's still got a little bit of that teal in it that I like. And then I'll lighten it up a little bit with that other one. Let's get a little more teal up in here. I swear I had one that was not quite that light in value. And now I can't find it. Maybe it's under here. Nope. Alright, well that's okay. I'm going to use this one again because I have the darker down. This will kind of lighten that up a little bit. Alright, so that's where I have that blue. And now that white cloud is going to be underneath that. Alright, so I'm putting these shapes in to kind of carve out the cloud so I know where they are. Alright, so let's get that lightest light in. And my lightest light that I have is this beautiful yellowy color. And I'm really thinking it's more in this area of the cloud right here. I've got some shadows in here. It's funny how even those little marks that I made really helped me to kind of guide me and know where things are. Love that. Now down here is not as yellowy in this little area right here. But I'm going to go ahead just because it's light enough. I'm not that worried about the color temperature back here. I might can tone it down if I feel like I need to later. So these are just kind of not very descriptive clouds back here. They're not going to have a lot of detail to them. And I've got to add that darker lavender. And sometimes I think I've mentioned this before. I make like color notes to be able to, even if I don't finish painting something, it's kind of nice just to sort of get something in there. Now I'm looking here, this value of this shadowy cloud over here almost blends right in with the value of the sky here. So it's kind of, you can sort of see a difference, but it's not much. Alright, now these shadowy clouds down here get a little darker in value. See this is, I think it's a little darker. Not much darker, just a hair darker. But I think I need to get something even darker. I'm kind of looking behind these trees. Yeah, I don't want it to blend in too much with these background trees. I think I need darker. Let's see what this does. That's light. Yeah, that's too light of pink. Sometimes you're still just experimenting. Now this is going to be probably too dark, but I'm going to use it and then tone it down with some other colors. And I just kind of play around behind these trees. And there's some nice blues coming back in here too. It's not all this dead color, but this helps me get the value in right now. I'm going to put, wherever I see this value, I'm going to go for it right now because I can kind of colorize it as I work. Getting those values in is key, even if the color is not exact. I'll play around with it. Oh yeah, this is a really nice, great neutral to get some of these middle cloud values in. Even like back in here, I've got to pay attention to this. I like how this cloud has just got a motion to it. Then another one right above the tree line just kind of scoops up here. Then another thing comes in here. This is more going down this. And then that's where that kind of meets in, where that highlight is. Okay, so now I notice again that this is more of a bluey purple color. So let me just try this color. Was this color too close in value to those trees? No, and because I made the trees a little darker, I'm sorry, lighter, I'm going to kind of play around and not make everything the exact same color that I see in the photo. Oops, that's supposed to be light. I'll fix that. You can really get creative with color when you start realizing you just got to get value right, you know? Oh man, I love these colors over in here. I got to add some more blue over in here. That's what I'm seeing right now. I have my iPad in a bad spot. I want to see it better so I set it over here. All right, yeah, see how I'm going to make these blues. That's going to be really pretty. Okay, we got these in here. And now I'm going to come back with, let me see, is this one too light? I need a darker blue. I am going to have to get up and get another color unless this one works. Let me see. Might be it. This might be it. Oh, that's it. So what? Oh, that's just so exciting. I want to see the color working with that. I love it, love it, love it, love it. Oh my gosh, I love this color. All right, so this is just kind of playing around back here behind the trees. Notice I'm just using the side. I'm not using any specific hard marks anywhere. There's a little bit of this blue in there with that mauve color. Not a lot. All right, here we go. Now we've got it coming back here behind this cloud. And I am only painting shapes. Okay, I've forgotten totally that these are even clouds because I'm just trying to get that movement and energy and explore with color. It's kind of what we do. Okay, now this kind of just comes back and up like this. Now I've got to get some of that energy back in here. Okay, so these were these clouds that kind of danced along back through here. And this one has the darker blues in here. Yeah, there we go. Okay, now this is where it got lighter. I put the dark in here or that mauve color. So I've got to lighten that up underneath there. But I'm getting my colors of these clouds back here pretty good. Now it's got some little marks back here. Now come in and maybe get a little more specific with. Not a lot of this blue above this tree, but a little bit. All right, let me see where else I might have some of this blue. You know, this is a darker area of the sky in here. I painted, there is some teal in it that I see. But it's definitely darker over here and that's going to also help to create the interest over here. And it shape more as I work. And there's a little bit of it peeking through back here, but that's also a little too light. I'll make a little color note and I'll come back and fix that. Okay, so now I'm seeing some of these. It's still the peachy salmon, but it's much darker over here on the tops of some of these clouds. So let me grab some of that color. This is a darker. You see how this was so light? Same color family, darker value. But I don't want it to be over here. This is the part that has the least interest. I don't want it to be so bold. I might even go darker than that. No, that's too bright. That's what I mean. I want it kind of dull. This is more of that dull color here. Yeah, that works better. See how that's dull? But it still has a little bit of that peachy color. Yeah, you wouldn't have thought that to look at that color, but look how it goes on. Color and value are dependent on what's next to it. Yeah, see, these are really, really subdued. That's the word I'm looking for. And I'm just using the side of this and I'm just looking and I'm giving it a shape. And then I'll come back and add the darks and the lights where I think they should be. That should even be darker over here. But I'll put a little bit in for now. Got a little bit of a darker lavender kind of like. Yeah, look at that. That's kind of a peachy lavender in there. I definitely see that in this cloud. You know, one of the great things that you can do is study nature. Start looking at the clouds. And I know all you guys are already doing this. You're looking at the clouds. What do they look like? What are the colors I see? Because they're not just white. Again, everything plays and has harmony against everything else. And this, yeah, this is probably a good color for some of these clouds. See how light this looks on this blue? But how dark it looks on that white? That's just like, you know, you don't know what value this is until you put it next to something, you know? But this is a good color for, there's actually a few little clouds back in here that are kind of reflecting, but it's going to get even darker down in here. But I got some of this down in here I really like. Oh yeah, that's pretty. This is going to gradually work up to a lighter value in here as you get higher in the sky. All right. And let's see, we got some of this over here in the tops of these clouds. All right. I've talked a lot. I think I'm just going to paint, turn on some music. I've said this before. I wish I could play the music for you guys that I listen to. I play a lot of praise and worship music. I like Lindsay Sterling. I play some oldies sometimes, not a lot of those, but you know, it's really, that's part of the joy of painting. It's the process. I mean, sometimes the finished painting, I'm like, oh yeah, I like that. It was what I experienced during the process. That was just the best part. So let me do that right now. All right. I stepped away and I'm glad I did because it was pretty easy to determine that this for now is just too light. I'm going to tone this down a little bit and sort of get in this mass so I get a better idea. That's a great opportunity for me to use some of my neutrals here because there's a lot of neutral colors going on in the clouds. And I only want to use the punch, maybe some punchy colors in a few places. All right. So let me tone these clouds down a bit and get some of the lighter values in. This is a pretty nice kind of mauve color and it's even bright next to some of these other colors. So again, it's all dependent on what it's next to. All right. Now I want to get in a little of this. Oh, yeah, I like this here. I got to get in my dark, shadowy colors under the clouds and that's also going to help determine that value. See how that's just a little lighter? Get some of these dark underbelly colors going. It's bright down. I'm speeding this up just a tad and I wanted to do a voiceover to talk just a little bit more about maybe thinking about techniques for painting clouds. I remember... I can't remember exactly how she said it but one of my favorite artists and dear friends now, though we've never met in person, is artist Deborah Secor. She is a member of our group in our Monet Cafe Art Group on Facebook and her expertise as an artist in various mediums is she just has a wealth of information and I really appreciate all the help she gave me when I was first getting started and I think that's a lot of the motivation behind my channel is that I want to help you guys because I had so many artists help me and Deborah was one of them but she mentioned something about painting clouds. I believe she also has a free... she actually has a free book you can get online and I believe there's a section in it on painting clouds but she mentioned about thinking of clouds like a box or a three-dimensional object and that it does behave really just like anything else would. I think we have this mystery in our mind about clouds and their see-through and their transparent and they change shape and form but when we look at clouds they actually do have form and light hits them just like it hits anything else some places it is a little bit more transparent but where the clouds are thicker you do have more light they do have shadows underneath typically because the sunlight is above them so when we can maybe wrap our heads around the fact of just treating a cloud like another three-dimensional object they're going to behave just like trees do on the land is they're going to decrease in value and color intensity decreasing as they go back further into the distance they're...perspectively they're going to behave like anything else where larger to smaller of course so if you can start thinking about clouds similar to how we think about other things that we paint and draw they're really the same they're not as mysterious as people think they do have various colors they're going to play on the colors of the light and the mood of the entire scene just like other things do so I think you've noticed here that I have changed the value quite a bit from that very first too bright of a...too light of a value that I put down it was one of those lighter yellows I'm going to stand out like a sore thumb if I didn't darken those values so that's why it is a good idea to work all over your painting instead of just in one little spot because you can correct things quickly that way so anyway I just wanted to add a little bit more about clouds and try to think of them as having mass and it may help you a little bit in getting things correct as I'm getting close to finishing this up I'm going to show you guys a technique I use sometimes on clouds not always but I never blend with my fingers and not a lot with anything usually sometimes with some pipe foam insulation at the beginning of a painting but I rarely do any blending at the end however this little fist technique I can't remember what artist I saw it from or if I came up with it myself it can kind of soften some of the clouds to kind of make it more cloudish and if I do that I do it sparingly and I also wipe my hand off real good when I do that now this is where I was talking about early on in the video similar to tree holes sky holes behind trees you're kind of carving the tree with the sky negative shapes you can do the same thing with clouds you can go in and kind of make the sky holes for the clouds so I find that technique works again we don't want any harsh edges so you keep a light touch and also I like to point out I know I pointed this out in other videos that try to when you're doing a sky hole whether it's behind a tree or behind a cloud try to use a value that's a tad darker I mean if you're in doubt about whether something's too light it probably is typically behind something the color of the sky is going to be a little darker in value and I'm using a little lighter there because I'm getting down a little closer to where the sky gets lighter but that's usually a good rule of thumb so as I finish this up I wanted to point out I do wish I had left the foreground less detailed I decided just to stop working on it to not overwork it but I did like some of the beginning stages better and I think it would have made the clouds more of the highlight of the painting but I did love doing this painting I do love painting clouds I hope you learned something and feel free always to ask questions in the comment section and join us in our Facebook group Monet Cafe Art Group I mean even if you're just interested in pastel painting or you've never done anything artistic before that's the place to be a question being too basic so anyway please subscribe I just love my art family here and come back soon I hope to have some more videos uploaded real soon thanks guys, happy painting