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Hi, I'm Marge Kinney and today we are going to learn how to paint a sky .
I would like to show you a couple of the skies that I enjoy painting...
One is up by Grover Beach, and this is in Central California...
I really enjoy walking along the dunes and when they particularly aim towards the ocean,
and their final resting place is at the ocean. The second one is "Sounds of the Pacific Shore"
and again, that is in the Central California area. However, it is up by Monterey, where
there are beautiful rocks and beautiful sunsets and absolutely beautiful, beautiful shorelines.
And again, those are in California. So we are going to start today by making a
sky. Here we go.
I am going to be using a "filbert" and there are a lot of brushes you can use to make a
sky. Some people prefer this round brush where you kind of "swirl" the sky and I am going
to be using mostly my filberts. So here we go.
If you notice I have the canvas under toned in gray and I will start out by putting a
little bit of white up on the sky area. And I am going to be using cerulean blue. I do
not use turpentine. In fact I do not use any medium like that to clean my brushes or whatever.
I am called a "dirty brush painter". To clean my brush I use a very soft towel.
When you feel these hand towels, you will be surprised how some are very soft like cloth
and others are rather stiff. And I really like this soft one.
All right. Now, usually when you do a sky, in one corner it is dark. If you look across
the sky line you have the advantage, particularly when you are painting plein air, of seeing
from one end of the horizon to the other. And, you will notice that the sky is never
the same and the other thing is that if you look straight up, because that sky is closer
to you than the sky far away, it is usually much bluer. So, as it gets towards the horizon
it actually becomes more aqua. So I am just going to put in some white here like this
by the dark tones, then the light tones. And I tend to like to make my clouds go off the
edge of the canvas. Now as I come down closer to the sky line
I am going to change the color to a little bit more aqua blue because in real life that
is kind of what it does. There is a little more aqua, more white.
Now, the clouds up above are closer to you so would normally be bigger. As they get farther
away, particularly when you are in Kansas or along the plains, you will see they get
very, very tiny along the horizon because they are actually very, very far away.
O.K. Once I get these going along here, the bottom of the clouds tend to be flat because
there is a lot of weight in them and there is all kinds of ways of fluffing up the edges
of clouds. I am going to stick with this filbert for
a minute. Now I am going to wipe off my brush just a little bit and I have a little liquid
medium here which is a fluid to make the brush move a little bit smoother so I am going to come along and add a little purple to the
bottom of the clouds, because as the cloud gets heavy it gets a little bit deeper.
Now I am going to go to rose and a little bit of rose...
[sighs and laughs a little]. I really enjoy painting! You know, I wake up at 6:30 in the
morning and I can hardly wait...sometimes I have "artist's block", but most of the time
I can hardly wait to paint my next painting. You could say it is art therapy but it is
really a wonderful way to live...to become an artist.
I was in the corporate world for many years, and had no idea I would ever be an artist.
But, what do you know, here I am, and I have so much fun doing it. OK. I am going to add
a little bit of orange, a peachy tone. Notice that I keep switching my brush, the
style of how I am holding the brush and at this time I am holding it like this and sometimes
I hold it like this. You can switch back and forth depending on what you are trying to
do. I am going to put a couple clouds in the front
which are drift along. This is just one moment in my life for clouds.
But believe me, every cloud I make is different and a new experience.
If I want to make the top of the cloud a little bit lighter, where it is just has more light
at the top, I will take just a little bit of yellow in with the cloud. And again, I
like to make these little tails on the clouds that go into each other.
O.K. that's about it and from there if I were to make an ocean you can see that will make
a beautiful start for a wonderful ocean scene. Oh, it's so much fun.
Anyway, that is the end of the sky for today. Thank you very much for joining me. Come again
soon. Bye bye.