Oil Paintings Should Not Be Full Of White Clouds

By Author: Anthony Keith Whitehead
Total Articles: 21
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Beginners in painting have a tendency to paint most, if not all, their clouds white. But only a proportion of clouds approach white. The rest can be any of a range of colours. So this article offers some tips which will hopefully help to make oil paintings more realistic. Newcomers to painting have a tendency to paint most, if not all, their clouds white. But only a proportion of clouds approach white. The rest can be any of a range of colours. So this article offers some tips which will hopefully help to make oil paintings more realistic.
Landscapes are very attractive for beginners to paint, and rightly so. But one needs to be careful about how the sky is treated and, in particular, how clouds are painted. The sky is sometimes regarded as just a backdrop to the painting but it is much more than that – it is an essential part which can add to, or detract from the painting.

A frequent error in painting skies is that clouds are sometimes rendered all white. But very few clouds are actually white, and when they are, it is often in very limited areas. Depending on such factors as the time of day and year, the weather, ...
... the amount of sun and its position in the sky, clouds can be anything but white.

Painting Clouds
Clouds keep giving the impression that they are simple to paint! This is partly because the scene below them is likely to be quite complicated and full of difficult - to - render things and objects. Because of other problems attached to executing the painting, we can sometimes neglect the kind of realism that is needed when painting the often not-so-white fluffy things above! In a picture (with trees and birds and buildings and so forth) clouds appear shapeless and, so, we might tend to think, they do not need as much attention.

So we may tend to paint the sky blue and then paste the clouds on top, a few here and a few there, perhaps without little thought as to their structure and disposition. Clouds have a limited number of types, although types can vary quite a bit. Cumulus, which are probably the most common type and seem to be heaped one layer on top of another,. Then there is stratus cloud that seems to spread itself without any features, often appearing as a gray mass though, again, there are different types of stratus. Altocumulus and altostratus are other types. All these, and the others, can vary significantly both in shape and colour.

Putting Clouds In Their Place
Skies are often blue but rarely continuously so. The colour of the sky can vary quite a lot, not least as it gets near to the horizon where the tone will change quite dramatically. At or near the horizon the colour may change to some shade of purple, for example, but unless we have previously taken notice of sky variations, we are unlikely to select the correct kinds of shades.

We need to consider the time of day, weather conditions, time of year and so forth. All these factors will influence the colours and appearance of the sky.

Likewise clouds: they have a good deal of detail overhead but virtually all of it can be lost towards the horizon (although there are exceptions to this, depending on where the horizon is and what it is). Indeed, the sky generally can lose detail towards the horizon, not least as clouds tend to mass up there, as in my painting of Peel, Isle Of Man. That should not be too surprising for the horizon is relatively far away and clouds overhead are not, and unless we are really thinking about it, we are perhaps unlikely to paint it as it is, which in any case will tend to be less distinct because of changes in the atmosphere.

Cloud Satisfaction
Much of the satisfaction in painting skies lies in making them real enough to be believable. That it is not always easy and needs to be worked at. The place to start, as in much oil painting, is in observation. A little knowledge and a little observation will go a long way in helping one to make landscapes with sky in them more realistic and believable.

AUTHOR: A K Whitehead
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