Contents Introduction Understanding Skies Materials Skies in Watercolour Skies on Location Skies in Other Media Design in Skies Using Your Camera Special Effects Photographs as a Source Reach for a Sky Completing the Picture Examples from the Experts Index 22 26 AL 49 33 67 72 WW 118 128Introduction You may be asking yourself why I'm attempting a book exclusively about skies. You may even think that this is getting too specialized. However, having written several general books on water~ colour, I've come back time and time again to the realization that skies dictate the whole mood and feeling of a painting. Yet this aspect of painting remains one of the most neglected and while much time and concentration are spent on things such as trees, buildings and rivers, the sky often remains merely an afterthought. Let's take a moment or two to imagine a quiet estuary drenched in sunshine which blazes down from a clear blue sky — just feel the warmth! Now transform the scene. Perhaps there's a storm approaching, and the warm blue gives way to dark, cool grey, which is matched by the water below. Although all the component parts of the scene are exactly the same, the whole atmosphere has changed and the mood is completely different. Why, then, when it is obviously so important, is the sky treated in such a cavalier fashion? It seems to me that one of the main reasons is fear, caused by a lack of knowledge. As a teacher, Tam often amazed how little basic knowledge students have about the sky above them. Even such funda- mentals as the fact that white cumulus clouds are like pieces of cotton wool under a spotlight, with a shadow beneath them, have to be explained. The feeling of peace and space in this composition is enhaneed by the mixture of warm and cool colours throughout the painting. A sense of unity is provided by the reflection in the water of the warm patch of sky above, and by the grey of the clouds being repeated in the trees on the distant horizon. ‘The eye is directed, by the main sweep of clouds, to the dark group of trees and their reflection on the left. The greatest warmth has been reserved for the foreground shore, giving perspective and depth to the sINTRODUCTION