This is part of a new piece called Ground Stories. Are you curious about how it was done? I’ll explain next month, so be sure to sign up for email updates to find out!
ANSWER TO MYSTERY TECHNIQUE #51:
I love to swim backstroke in the summer and look at the sky, especially when it’s filled with dramatic cumulus clouds. This Mystery Technique is a small section of a 30-inch wide sky painting.
I began by wetting the entire piece of paper and applying pale washes of yellow and pink. After they dried, I rewet the paper and started suggesting the cloud’s shape by painting around it with washes of blue; I also added multiple layers of bluish grays for the cloud’s shadows. To increase the illusion of depth, I added a mixture of cobalt and cerulean gouache to the top of the sky before transitioning to cerulean watercolor. Using a spray bottle to partially wet the paper made it easier to mimic the irregular outline of the cloud’s edge.
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