A Cloudy sky

"You don't make art. You find it." Pablo Picasso

On my recent visit to Malshej Ghats, I came across some dramatic skies. Being monsoon season the weather was a bit dull and there was not enough light to capture the scene well in the camera. At such times I have to observe and store the information in my memory so that I can retrieve the information at a later time when I actually get down to painting the scene.

The soft pastel painting below is one such scene from Malshej Ghats that made an impact on me and I wanted to create a study work of the same. I call it "Study work" as I have not painted many "Cloudy Landscapes" in the past and am yet to get a full understanding of the shapes, perspective and the colours in the clouds. When handling a new subject, it is more of experimenting and exploring which in turn slowly leads to a great learning experience.

Apart from the dense scattered clouds,what I also loved about this scene in particular is the diffused light that filtered through the clouds and illuminated the water covered fields below.

The Cloudy sky ( A study work )

A soft pastel painting on Canson MT paper

Size 5"X 7"

Painting clouds is new to me and I find it very challenging. I remember as kids when we drew a landscape, there always used to be a few common elements in it namely mountains in the distance, a small house, a river and fields. The sky was almost similarly drawn by everyone in a beautiful uniform blue and few fluffy white clouds floating around. Those drawing days were fun. 

Now when I look at the clouds closely I realise that there are so many different colours in each cloud other than gray and blue. I am planning to do a little more deep study of this interesting element. In fact it is more like doing "Cloud Anatomy".

Thanks for visiting my blog and browsing through my works.