How to Paint a Simple Watercolour Sky

In this lesson, I want to show you how to paint a very, very simple sky using one colour, French Ultramarine Blue. I'm going to put a wash of clean water onto the paper, going to drop some of the French Ultramarine Blue onto the paper, and then I'm going to create clouds by lifting some of them out with a kitchen roll, I wouldn't be without the kitchen roll, and taking some of the colour off with what I describe as sort of a hungry brush so we can take some of the colour from the paper. It's probably quicker for me to show you than to talk about it. So, big brush, clean water over the paper, give it a few moments to soak in, and that's something that you really need to experience. You need to do it a few times just to see how wet the paper has to be. If it's too wet, the colour sort of floats on the surface of the paper. Too dry, it won't move on the paper. So do it a few times and be prepared to get it wrong. Okay, that should be alright, so I've got some French Ultramarine out already. Nice big brush, I'm using a size 12, and a nice puddle of colour. Let's just drop some colour up here, a few little marks there that could already become clouds. It's becoming slightly paler as we get down to the paper here. I much prefer working on stretch paper, I much prefer working on stretch paper, even for little lessons like this. Okay, that's still nice and wet. Now I've got the kitchen roll, I'm just going to fold it, instead of crumpling it up I quite like to fold it, a little bit of origami here, into a kind of a little chisel, little chisel shape. And I can use that then, just to start to lift a few clouds from the painting. Be careful that you don't keep pushing onto the paper with the colour you've just lifted, because instead of taking it off, you'll end up printing it back on. So I'm constantly sort of changing where it's coming from. More kitchen roll. What we did before kitchen roll, I have no idea. Put some shapes into those clouds. As we get towards the horizon, they become smaller, in fact this is a good position just to use the brush here, so take off all the excess moisture, and we can just lift a few little marks here with the brush. Always wiping it once again on kitchen roll. Smaller, smaller marks, little bits there, and that's it. I always think it's useful when you've done a little sky study, to put a little landscape underneath just to see how it works. So I've put a little bit of, could be the moors, could be a little bit of open landscape or a little bit of open moorland, I've taken the tape off so you get a better view of it. Let me just point out a couple of things. We wet the whole of the surface of the paper, dropped in a single colour, varied the strength of it slightly so it's slightly darker at the top and paler at the bottom, and the sky tends to be like that. We used our brush at the bottom to lift off some of the colour, and we've got these lovely cloud-like shapes, and then of course we used the kitchen roll, and I folded it so that I could get a sort of paper towel chisel, so I was able to see where the paper comes into contact with the paint, with the wet paint. You have to work quite quickly, but I was able to lift off and able to sort of rock it so I got some of these little cloud-type shapes at the top here. Working quite quickly, because you want to do this when it's wet, don't forget, don't keep pressing back into the paper because you'll be lifting the colour off and then you'll be printing it back on, and that folding I think works better in many ways than crumpling. If I crumple it, I don't always see what part of the paper touches the sky, the colour we want to lift off. It's a really, really simple lesson. One colour, a little bit of landscape underneath, you can have a go.