Painting clouds is an important part of landscape painting and something I’m always happy to practice. Do you ever drive around and just can’t take your eyes off the sky? Off the clouds? This was one of those days.
Myrrh and I were driving down a back road outside of Bellville, Texas; it was a straight road with fields on either side and the sky went on forever. We just needed a place to pull over, what was on the ground didn’t really matter, it was the sky we wanted to paint.
We found space to pull over right next to a long dirt drive up to an old house and set up to paint. My easel was actually in the middle of that drive. Halfway into the painting a car pulled up and I thought she just wanted to see our paintings, but no, I was blocking the road to her house.
In my painting I did have her little country house, but I took it out because I didn’t think the painting needed it. If it doesn’t add to the painting, then it doesn’t need to be there. That’s a BIG rule in painting, at least for me. It’s especially good to remember that as I’m working on simplifying my paintings down to the essence of the design.
This was a fun adventure and I was happy to get more practice painting clouds today.