How to Paint a Sky With Oils

Capture the depth of the sky in oils with quick flicking strokes of a brush.

A sky is a natural part of any landscape painting and, therefore, is a feature that many painters should learn how to pull off convincingly. Fortunately, painting skies in oil colors is not a difficult task to learn, although to master the many forms a sky can have takes a lifetime. The most important elements are the brushing techniques-- rather than rolling on the paint in long smooth motions as you would when painting a wall, you need techniques to leave the canvas blotchy, so that colors fade naturally into one another.

Things You'll Need

• 2 primer brushes Pre-stretched canvas with base coat Fan brush Titanium white, blue and red oil paint Paint palette

Instructions

1. Separate your paints and squeeze a thumbnail-sized glop of each paint--white, blue, and red--onto your palette.

2. Prepare your canvas for painting if you don't have a pre-base coated canvas. Mix some clear thinning medium with a dab of white paint into your primer brush in order to thin out your paint and use up less of it. Scrub the canvas with the brush to give the entire surface a shine. This action wets the canvas and helps the paint mix and soften.

3. Mix a few dabs of blue paint into the thinned white spot on your pallet. Paint at one top corner of the canvas working your way around the upper portion of the canvas. Do not roll the brush in large swaths. Instead, flick, twist and rotate your brush. Leave empty spaces between the blue to emphasize depth in your sky.

4. Put down your wet brush and pick up a new dry primer brush. Smooth out some of the sharp edges of the sky with the dry brush, melting the blue color into the white pre-base coat until the sky looks smooth, while avoiding uniformity.

5. Mix in a dash of red paint into the blue and white splotch on your canvas to create a grayish lavender. Apply this where you wish the sky to look darker.

6. Put down the last primer brush and pick up a small fan brush. Flatten it in some white paint and apply this to the canvas over the blue to create clouds. Smooth out edges with the second primer brush you used to create wispy clouds or leave the clouds white and sharp in spots to create dramatic cumulus clouds.

References

• "The Complete Oil Painter: The Essential Reference for Beginners to Professionals"; Brian Gorst; 2004