This is a quick post in response to a follower's particular interest. Last week in the blog comments, Suzy wrote saying she's had difficultly painting clouds and was going to flip over to my painting website to see "how to do it right". (!)
I don't know about "right" but you should know that as a sky loving
x-pilot, I take tons of photos and as you've seen, I do sketches when moved. I put the pic's together, edge to edge or overlapped, to construct the basis for an interesting and believable sky.
I know that there are only a couple of pantings there on my website (philspaziani.com) that show any sky at all and none of any real "cloud interest" so here are parts of a couple that focus on the cloud filled sky. This whole painting measures about 10 x 17 inches. - you are seeing about two thirds of it with some loss at the bottom
This horizontal image below is actually a reject. I'd finished a painting one time and realized I didn't like the composition. (Looking now at this post, I think it actually must have been the one above) There was just too much sky! Since I paint mostly on board or panel rather than canvass, it was easy to cut off the top couple of inches, do some repainting and the image was greatly improved! My wife happened by just then and asked if I would frame that excess piece for her, saying it would fit under the upper cupboards in the kitchen very nicely. There it hangs today, "A Sky for Lorraine'"!
"I never had to choose a subject - my subject rather chose me." Ernest Hemingway
"I was never one to paint space, I paint air." Fairfield Porter
"Where you stumble, there lies your treasure." Joseph Campbell
I would also have put your "reject strip" in my kitchen! It's beautiful. I tried clouds again last weekend. At least, they look better than the trees! http://kismetry.blogspot.com/2015/08/in-progress-project-and-ongoing-aaargh.html
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