Today’s watercolor experiment:

After my warmup exercises (see Warmup – Storms) of creating storms in small vignettes (tempest in teapots, if you will), the el Niño in me decided to let loos on larger paper.

I retrieved a block of my 12″x16″ paper from its hiding place, unwrapped it, carefully removed the black paper from the top watercolor sheet and prepared my pigments.  Instead of using the cobalt blue/cadmium red light combination for gray, I used neutral tint. This is a warmer gray than Payne’s gray and, if I run out of wash, I don’t have to prepare another batch as I would with the above combination of blue and red.

I used a 1″ Hake brush to begin my angry sky. I ripped into it. I wiped some of the excess pigment with a paper towel, used a 2″ Hake brush in places and the side of my knife to scrape away pigments.

I painted a thick layer of burnt umber to represent the land and darkened the horizon with more neutral tint. I did much scraping of this area with my knife.

Perhaps a closer cropping would add believability to this composition. I do like the suggestion of very dark clouds, and a bit of wind. I would have liked more wind and more dispersed clouds.

Maybe I should pay attention in the next couple of days here in Northern California. It is supposed to be very stormy.