Lake District Sky Studies

Lake District Sky - Sunday
Watercolour on Paper
18cm x 11.5cm (7" x 4.5")

Elaine and I spent last weekend in the Lake District at the beginning of my Brother Adrian’s month long birthday celebrations.

The weather was unexpectedly good – so good and so unexpected I managed to get sun burnt in northern England in the first week of April.

Lake District Sky - Saturday
Watercolour on Paper
18cm x 15cm (7" x 6")

The skies on this post are a tribute to the weekend. I painted them both using my favourite cloudy sky technique:

Paint the cloud shapes on to dry paper with a very pale dirty orange. Add some shadows with dirty purples and greens. Paint around them with blue, varying the colour a bit and lightening it towards the bottom. It’s simple, forgiving and reasonably effective.

I painted both skies as the background for bigger paintings, but in both cases I botched the main subject and ended up cropping the skies to keep them for reference.