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PAINTING SKIES AND CLOUDS –
Finn Campbell-Notman
Reference Image
Landscape Artist of the Year, Series 8 winner, Finn Campbell-Notman, invites us into his world of creativity, revealing the artistry behind capturing the ever-changing skies and clouds that breathe life into his powerful, evocative landscapes.
Reference Image
Materials
Canvas (primed with a neutral, medium-
warm wash and gridded)
Set of Oil paints – Raw Umber,
Gold Ochre, Paynes Grey, Sky Blue,
Ultramarine Blue, Sepia or Olive Green,
Titanium White
Selection of brushes (inc. large
round brush)
Palette
Solvent
Find these items at cassart.co.uk
Preparing your canvas
Begin with a primed canvas of a neutral warm ground.
Using the reference photo provided, grid your canvas with 7 squares across and 5 squares down.
Mix a limited palette of oil paints from dark to light. We recommend using Raw Umber, Gold Ochre, Paynes Grey, Sky Blue and Titanium White. Clouds have a limited tonal range and so starting with a medium-warm wash means you can work forwards and backwards in tone using these colours.
Using pencil, begin sketching the key elements of the image. This includes the clouds, hills, bushes & trees. Your drawing does not have to be too detailed, as by their nature, clouds are organic.
Top Tip- When drawing the clouds, remember that you don’t want hard edges. You simply need to indicate where the slither of blue sky begins amongst the clouds.
Applying the dark tones to the clouds
Take a large brush and paint the dark tones you can see in the clouds. Swirl and scrub the brush on the canvas. This will replicate the patterns of the clouds that your eye can see.
The paint mix should be thin. You want to avoid streaks in your clouds and a thin mix of paint will help with this.
Vary the tone slightly each time you run out of paint. This will give the clouds a more natural look as clouds are microtonally different throughout.
Be mindful of where tones meet and lightly mix.
Don’t worry if the tones in the clouds are similar as the key to this composition will be the blue sky between the clouds.
Applying lighter tones to the clouds
Mix together the lighter tones you can see in the clouds. You can do this by adding Gold Ochre to the warm grey you used to paint the darker tones. The colour will feel similar to your ground.
Before applying your mix, hold it up to the reference image to ensure you have mixed the right tones.
Take a smaller brush and apply the lighter tones to the correlating areas of light in the clouds.
Top tip – Clouds are always lighter on the outside.
Painting the blue sky
Mix up the relevant blues and apply to the area of sky on your canvas. We recommend using Ultramarine Blue
The blue at the bottom of the sky should always be paler than the blue at top. At this stage, the blue at the top of the sky might feel quite grey.
Painting the foreground
Similar to when you added the blue sky, painting the foreground will help you refine the tones in your cloud.
For the foreground, mix Raw Umber and Sepia or Olive Green.
Roughly paint in the trees and curves on the hill. Don’t worry too much about your brushstrokes here, you want an overall smokiness to the atmosphere. Work across the hill. Mix the various tones and apply them to the correlating areas in the foreground. Experiment with your paint to get the right tone.
Keep stepping back to make sure your tones are accurate.
Returning to your clouds
With your foreground painted, it’s time to play with the highlights in the clouds in order to give them depth.
Mix up a green/yellow colour. It needs to be lighter than the light tones you have already applied to the clouds. In the reference image, the highlights are at the edge of the clouds. Blend tones as you work through the cloud.
Vary your brush size when blending. This will help the clouds feel more realistic and organic.
Creating harmony between the foreground and background
The clouds are the main focus of this piece, when you are happy with them, return to the foreground and add more defining features such as the trees at the top of the hill.
Look at the clouds, have they changed in relation to the foreground?
Make adjustments between foreground and background until you are happy with your work.
