Today I post my drawing of  sky with clouds. I had  been checking on skies  from my window   during several days trying to capture an inspiring moment which would meet the requirements of the exercise given on the page 64 Drawing 1: drawing skills. I picked up a day to make a photo when the sky  was with a lot of clouds and different tones – white,  dark grey, bleuish and light grey and their forms were versatile- so I could practice to draw different shapes and types of clouds.

I started to work with oil pastels but after putting  a certain amount of blue  strokes I understood that the texture of oil pastels  didn’t fit to my task of creating the skies as  much as beautiful  as they were, because oil pastels do not rub well and stay in small “fat” dots and grains. So I switched on to  coloured chalks and pencils. I used SEURAT “pastels secs” blue, lavender and grey colour. Grey colour chalk was really perfect  for dark grey clouds. Initially I pencilled (with an HB pencil) borders between the tones- for  blue part  in the center and grey part  on top of my paper. I also pencilled large clouds,  leaving a white space for my future white clouds. Then I started to put a blue background at the center part and rub it after with my finger. The same I did with grey chalk  on top, leaving some space white for future light grey areas, trying to create a light coming through the grey clouds. Then I started to create, giving a shape to my white clouds with a rubber. I discovered that rubbing with it on blue coloured surface dose create a good cloud. I rubbered the edges between the  blue and white parts,  to get them soft, so they would look natural.  The bottom part took much more time  because there were  lot of details – many small clouds with lot of different shades. I pencilled the shapes first, creating some sort of “map” for myself, so I could work on each cloud separately, because  the clouds  at the bottom part of my paper should contain  far more shapes, lines and different shades. I am quite happy with overall look of my drawing, but I am not very happy with  a cloud on the right bottom part. It was very difficult for me to create the edges of the bottom clouds and I must confess that they look quite simplified. I will try to draw them separately, enlarging them on my photo.  After I did the bottom part I started to work on general look- that was the longest part of my work, adding numerous and endless  touch ups with blue and grey pencils for tones and shades.  I also used PRISMALO acquarel pencil in dark blue and small brush to trim the edges of some clouds, bringing them a better natural look.

Below is my work in progress and the photo of the sky.

 

 

 

Below is my another observational drawing of skies`tone and  cloud formation. For this draing I used coloured pencils by Derwent.