Sky Washes 8, 9 and 10

Sky Wash 10
(Improve Your Skies in Watercolour - Demonstration 3)
Watercolour on Paper
25.5cm x 15cm (10" x 6")

These pictures are based on the demonstrations from Geoff Kersey's Improve Your Skies In Watercolour programme on The Painting and Drawing Channel.

The first two demonstrations (the second and third pictures on the post) are wet into wet skies.

Sky Wash 8
(Improve Your Skies in Watercolour - Demonstration 1)
Watercolour on Paper
25.5cm x 18.5cm (10" x 7.25")

I found it difficult to achieve results that look anything like the demonstrations. Geoff makes them look easy, but they are not. He suggests these skies need repeated practice and he is right.

The most difficult aspects to gauge are the wetness of the paper and the dilution of the paint. These factors govern how much the paint disperses and the strength of the resulting colours.

In both of these exercises I used paint that was too strong and added it while the paper was too wet.

I am not sure I would use either of these skies in a painting (even if I painted them perfectly), but trying to replicate them is a good way to practice wet into wet technique.

Sky Wash 9
(Improve Your Skies in Watercolour - Demonstration 2)
Watercolour on Paper
25.5cm x 17.5cm (10" x 6.75")

The third demonstration (the picture at the top of the post) is my favourite.

Geoff started by wetting the paper and leaving some dry patches as starting points for the clouds. He added the blue and blotted out some more cloud shapes with a paper towel. He then let the sky dry before adding the grey cloud shadows.

An important part of this sky (and most realistic skies) is that it appears lighter towards the horizon. One of the techniques Geoff uses to achieve this is to paint the top part of the sky when his brush is full of paint and the lower parts as it runs out.