Painting the Sky, Clouds & Aerial Perspective
with Christopher Clements & Kieran Ingram
Our second Plein Air Workshop in 2025 on the 22nd May at Tegg’s Nose Coutry Park concentrated on the sky and the effects of distance on colour and tone. We had had really good weather conditions with no rain but plenty of moisture in the air to help everyone study the effects of aerial perspective. The sky got more interesting throughout the day with fun but challenging conditions in the afternoon as the clouds changed faster than the morning.
Morning Session – What’s going on in the sky,
How capture the drama using perspective & tone
We started with a quick chat about general cloud types and how they sit at different altitudes. These layers of cloud suit using inverted linear perspective to draw them, creating a sense of scale and depth. The first exercise we did was making small perspective sketches looking at these layers using the ‘point of wind’ (where it’s coming from) as a perspective vanishing point.
Thinking about where the clouds are coming from and what they are doing as they move across the sky creates a sense of movement and drama. The thumbnail drawings we made in this exercise are a really useful way of analysing the sky. They can be also be used as compositional plans for longer studies especially when the sky is changing quickly and keeping up with the changes would be impossible.
Once we’d looked at what was going on in the sky and made quick sketches we set about making monochrome studios in paint. Working in monochrome allowed everyone to observe the changes in contrast from overhead down to the horizon. This sense of aerial perspective in the sky reinforces the linear perspective we’d already looked at and is essential for creating depth in your work.
Afternoon Session – Colour changes across the sky
After a great lunch the The Nose Cafe we spent the afternoon working on a colour study looking at the effect of distance on the colour of the clouds and land against the blues or the sky. The weather helped us out here as the rolling stratus cloud layer of the morning session opened up into fluffy cumulus cloud with interesting breaks of open sky. This creates it’s own challenges as it changes more quickly, but that’s the fun of painting outdoors!
Many thanks to everyone who came along, you were all great company and produced some really nice sky studies.
Thanks also to The Nose Cafe for the great food and as always, to Martin James the Countryside Ranger who looks after Tegg’s Nose and makes us all so welcome.
Thanks for reading and looking forward to the next workshop on Thursday 26th June 2025, Chris
Useful Links
- Kieran Ingram Instagram
- Christopher Clements Instagram
- Tegg’s Nose Facebook
- The Nose Cafe, Instagram
Portrait Demo for the Society of Marple Artists
With Christopher Clements
The Society of Marple Artist’s kindly invited me to do a demonstration portrait at their meeting on the 8th May 2025. Being VE day, we were serenaded from below by a band playing wartime hits which created nice soundtrack to the demo. One of the things I like about working from life is the effect that the atmosphere of the session has on the process and the swing music drifting up will always be associated with this drawing in my mind.
With this being a demo I decided to keep the drawing simple and concentrate as much as possible on one thing, so I focussed on the ‘Bed bug lines’. This is a term for the transitions from shadow to light and is one of the most important areas to focus on when rendering form and texture. With this in mind I chose a simple pose and a technique which I learned a few years ago on a workshop with Henry Yan, a fantastic artist who teaches at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
The technique involves sketching out the shadow shapes in willow charcoal. Willow charcoal is easily rubbed out or brushed around while you get the proportions and design right. This is then overlaid with Conte pencils and then rubbed smooth with a folded piece of kitchen paper creating evenly toned shapes with soft edges. Conte won’t move around or erase like willow charcoal so you have nice fixed set of shadows to work over.
Following the Conte layer I applied a second layer of willow charcoal over the shadows. This can then be brushed out of the shadows to create the mid-tones and soften the edges of the shadows further where needed.
We talked a bit about using tonal value and grouping it into distinct families of shadow, mid-tone and light to create a strong sense of form. Once dark accents and highlights are added to this you have a very efficient way to lay down the main values and modelling of a drawing with a full value range. Getting the nuts and bolts of a drawing down quickly is really useful when time is limited.
By now we had a nice foundation to investigate the bed bug lines and sharpen up areas I wanted bring into focus. It’s much easier to sharpen edges than soften edges and this approach suits this principle really well. We talked a bit about the nature of the edge quality of shadows at this point. In particular the difference between cast and form shadow edges and how this distinction really helps to create a sense of form. With this in mind, I spent the remaining time carefully rendering the edges of the shadows to create as much variety as I could before the end of the session.
I hope I managed to get across that having a good idea of what you’re trying to achieve and an efficient approach to your drawing allows you to achieve as much as you can in the time available.
Back in the studio I spent a few minutes tidying up a couple of corners which were bothering me. I intentionally didn’t use any reference for this so that I wasn’t tempted to fundamentally alter anything or lose the spirit of the moment in which the drawing was created.
Many thanks to The Society of Marple Artists for hosting me and Ruth Chesterman in particular for organising the demo and Sue for being a fantastic model. I hope to see you all again before long.
If you’d like a demo or workshop at your local art group drop me a line at info@northernrealist.com
Christopher Clements.
Useful Links
Society of Marple Artists Instagram Account
Christopher Clements Instagram Account
Northern Realist Instagram Account
Plein Air Painting Workshop: Sky & Clouds
1st June 2023, Tegg’s Nose Country Park, Macclesfield
June’s Plein Air Workshop dealt with painting the sky. This is arguably the most important element in landscape painting, having such a profound effect on everything else.
We met up at Tegg’s Nose Tea Room and over a coffee talked about the importance of the sky in landscape painting. We talked about the basic cloud types, how they form, dissolve and move as well as the effects of linear and aerial perspective.
Then we went outside and spent some time just looking at the difference in appearance of the sky from the zenith above your head down to the horizon. We looked the variation in tone and colour and the way the clouds were moving on the layers or air in the vast space above us.
The first task was to make some quick sketches in pencil thinking about linear perspective and how it can help make sense of the sky as well as the land. Particularly in relation to the point of wind (the direction the wind is blowing from and therefore which direction the clouds appear to come from). These sketches are really helpful because the sky is constantly moving. So deciding on a design and then using the sky as reference is much easier than constantly changing your painting as the sky evolves.
We then made some tonal studies using monochrome paint to explore the effects of aerial perspective. The morning sky on the day was perfect for this with bands of cumulus and stratus clouds retreating towards the horizon.
After a nice lunch and a chat in the Tea Room, we set out to explore the effects of colour using a simple three colour palette, sort of a ‘Zorn for landscape’ limited palette. This reduced the complexity of the colour mixing so that we could practice the principles explored in the morning.
During the afternoon, the sky clouded over with nimbus clouds which meant that a slightly different approach needed to be taken. This, however was a useful lesson for landscape painting because above all, you need to be adaptable and paint according to the conditions.
Everyone taking part produced some very nice little studies and the development throughout the day was great to see. Thanks to everyone who came and made it such a fun day, I hope you all took away some useful knowledge, it was a certainly a pleasure working with you all. There is plenty more to look at in the sky concerning colour and light diffusion but that will have to wait for another day!
In July we’ll be covering features of the landscape, follow the link below for more info and booking.
Hope to see you there, Chris
