I’m always taking pictures of clouds. I would love to be able to create on the paper, what I see in the sky. There are plenty of books and tutorials on painting cloudscapes, but so far I haven’t seen one that explains how to paint a specific one.

The cloud in the photo below is very fine. You can almost see individual water vapor droplets.

Wispy Clouds

I started out my watercolor by painting splashes of frisket (watercolor resist) on the paper and scraping it with a piece of cardboard.  In keeping with the simplicity of the photograph, I used a single pigment, ultramarine blue, to wash the rest of the paper.  I repeated the wash process four times. In between washes, I lifted pigment from the trailing edge of the cloud, with a paper towel.

Wispy Clouds
12″x9″ 140# Cold Pressed Block

Looking at both pictures side-by-side is painful. I was disappointed with the coarseness of my pretend clouds.

Will try again.