Dramatic Cloud Study

I took the following photo and wanted to paint the scene - with the clouds being the dramatic focus.

So I painted it. Here is my first attempt. Now, I have had two different "cloud lessons" from Rachael McCampbell over the past couple years - and doggone it, I STILL can't do clouds well.



So, after being totally unhappy with those clouds, I scraped off the sky entirely.


Then I painted it again.


Okay - it sucks. So I left it - figuring that if I let it dry a little overnight, it might work a little more easily.  Right now it's just a mass of paint. "Muddy" is the term that comes to mind. I will tackle it again in a day or two.

One thing I considered was that I used an Ampersand Gessobord for this painting. The Ampersand Gessobord has a very slick surface. Maybe I should have tried one of my Belgium Linen panels. I may re-do this scene on one of those. The other thing is that maybe I'm putting on the paint too thickly. I tend to be overly generous with my paint, and that makes it more difficult to finesse things like clouds. So there are two things to work on for this painting.

Stay tuned for more attempts. I know I can get the trees and the grass and the hay rolls to look right. They don't look right now because I've just blocked them in. But I know how to paint them. It's just the clouds right now that have me stumped.

#Oilpainting, #paintingclouds, #marycarolart, #cloudstudy