In reply to a recent comment, here are some thoughts and ideas connected with watercolours and skies. Please try these out on scrap paper first as I would hate to be the agent of expensive disasters.
I've had a long journey learning to use watercolour paints. Can I start with some basic/well known stuff and my apologies if you have heard this before. Actually, half of this is probably fictitious.
Get a copy of a Colour Wheel to understand how colours interact and complement each other.
Find out which colours are transparent and which are opaque. (Helps when mixing/glazing. Information is usually supplied by the manufacturer).
Try to avoid mixing too many colours together otherwise you will create MUD.(If you need to add other tones learn to glaze with transparent colours).
Most colours can be obtained by mixing the three primaries together although you can obtain a huge and confusing range of each primary colour from different manufacturers.
Find out which colours are cold and which are warm. This can be useful when using Aerial Perspective as cold colours generally indicate distant objects while warm generally means closer – but not always. (e.g. in snow scenes)
Learn about Complementary Pairs.(Use these pairs of colours to enhance/tone down each other) Also learn how to mix complementaries to obtain a range of greys.
Avoid using black and white as tones and tints. Black deadens a watercolour while white makes it chalky.
Obtain a range of tones by thinning the paint. If the result is too weak you can always glaze with the same colour again. My paintings tend to look “delicate” as I am a coward, tending to avoid strong colours. If I could learn to do this I would be able to add “Value” to surrounding areas more easily.
Find out and keep a record of, your favourite colours and useful mixes. e.g. Light Red is very intense. Use it sparingly. Most folk know that yellow and blue make green. By adding a SMALL amount of red, browns are obtained. Large amounts of red produce mud. A better option for browns is to consider the earth colours. In my opinion, the best ever colour is Burnt Sienna. This can be added to French ultramarine or cobalt blue to produce an intense dark, almost black colour. Try adding small amounts of red or green (depending on the type of scene you are painting) to the mix. This will “knock the colour back” giving a softer effect. If it is used very thinly, various shades of grey can be obtained. Cobalt violet is great for producing a warm grey when mixed with certain yellows. Terre Verte is the only green I used straight from the tube. Its name means “earth green”. Even then it can, as all greens do, dominate a painting so add small amounts of red (burnt sienna is good) or glaze with very thin light red. Shadows tie all parts of a painting together. The grey, mentioned above is good for shadows in small areas, such as under the eaves of a building but for larger areas use a mixture of cobalt blue, alizarin crimson and burnt sienna. This “brown- purple” might look strange but it works. Use Hooker's green, sparingly with some of the earth colours to obtain a wide range of greens. If your greens dominate your scene, lessen their effect by glazing with its complementary. A great grey for clouds can be mixed from a small amount of light red and cerulean blue.
Understand what the physical properties of watercolour paint are. If you paint a surface with any colour, and you want it to stay as it is, you should let it dry before over-painting it or by painting up to the edge of it or by dropping paint onto a wet colour. One reason is, both patches of paint will run into each other. You can, of course, use this intermingling to your advantage. This is called painting wet into wet and this can produce some great effects. It works because thin paint will always run towards thick paint. If you put two different colours of the same consistency next to each other then the edges will mix and will continue to run into each other until the stuff starts to dry. You can stop the stuff running by applying heat from a hair-dryer. You can even get unusual effects by dropping thick paint into a thin mix then stopping it quickly, with your drier. Thick paint will not travel as far as thin. If thin paint is applied to a stronger mix on your canvas there is a danger that it will spread out of control. If you happen to drop pure water, or very thin paint, onto some wet paint then you will get a cauliflower type of result known as a run back. This is not always desirable but can be great for painting the centres of flowers. Be careful, therefore, if you try to fiddle with your still wet, painted surface by adding a freshly made up mix. If the new mix is weaker than the stuff on the paper then you will get unwanted side effects. Here is where your hair-dryer comes in handy as you can freeze the paint in its tracks, with practise.
Now that you are confused, how can this be used for skies?
Most, not all skies have clouds. These should not be painted with tints, such as Chinese White. Use the white of the paper to create white, fluffy clouds.
If your sky has lots of clouds then the ones nearer the horizon will look smaller. The gaps between them will also diminish until they form one layer in the distance. Overhead clouds are much larger and more detailed with shadows.
Most daytime skies normally show a fair amount of blue (Physicists will explain why). If your scene shows stuff close up then use something like French Ultramarine. If there is a distant blue then a colder blue, such as cerulean blue works well. If you use more than one blue then use a graduated wash where one spreads into the other. Alternatively, sneakily separate the two colours with a layer of horizontal cloud.
As the sun rises or sets it shines through distant clouds, pollution etc and a wide range of colours can be observed. Some morning and evening skies are almost black/ink blue overhead lessening through a range of purples, reds, towards the yellow of the rising sun or crimson of the setting sun. If there is any blue sky it is possible to actually see the colours mix in the sky – honestly! I have seen a whole spectrum of colours, including tones of green. I notice this more and more over the past 25 years as I have learned to observe less lazily. (Margaret reckons its probably my age – but that's another story).
Paint your skies by wetting the paper with clean water then add the different mixes. Clouds can either be left or lifted out with a “thirsty” brush, leaving some wet white areas for the shadow mixes. You CAN lift out with tissue paper but I've found that folk get confused and use paper kitchen towels instead. This is no good. Use a very soft tissue like a Kleenex (Oops! Adversing!). This will, unfortunately, dry the surface of the clouds so wait until the rest of the paint is completely dry, re-wet the clouds and drop in the shadows.
Some colours and mixes for different skies include:
Daytime sky 1 – French Ultramarine at the top of the page (overhead), Cerulean Blue in the distance. Clouds shadows from Cerulean and light red
Daytime sky 2 – Antwerp Blue for most of the sky. This intense and penetrating colour stains quite easily and is difficult to lift out. This sky is good for close up work e.g. Sky behind a single building.
Overcast Daytime sky- Wash whole page with weak raw sienna. While wet drop in your favourite greys, in horizontal streaks, making the distant grey colder. For the overhead clouds add a further, stronger grey to the foot of the clouds to enhance the underside shadows allowing the wet paper to graduate the effect (this is where all of the previous stuff might help with weak/strong mixes)
Winter Stormy sky – Use Payne's grey dropped into a light background e.g. a thin overall wash of Raw sienna or Naples Yellow.
Evening sky in winter – Graduated horizontal washes in this order - Almost black overhead, Cobalt violet, Light red and cobalt blue, Light red, Aureolin Yellow at horizon. Allow layers to merge/bleed into each other. When the scene is almost dry, streak some very dark, purple/black clouds across the lighter parts remembering to use the aerial perspective of smaller at a distance.
Spectacular Morning Sky – Wet the whole page and use a bright colour (e.g. Alizarin Crimson and Light Red in different tones from the horizon upwards. Anything below the horizon should be black. Add other shapes using the dark, on top of the dry page. To see what I'm getting at look at this photograph
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28475994@N00/57175972/in/set-72157607023483250/
which I was lucky enough to take early one winter morning.
Hope this has helped
Bob
