How to Paint a Cloudscape and Cityscape

There is nothing more beautiful in nature than a colorful sky at sunset or at sunrise.  Also what is beautiful is a city skyline at twilight and a towering thunderstorm looming a city.  In this blog I discuss how I painted a cumulonimbus cloud with an anvil top near city buildings.

I started this painting like most of my paintings with an underpainting.  I used a yellow ochre wash to accomplish this.  

Here is a view of my glass palatte a palatte knife and the colors I mixed.  I used phthylocyanine blue, sky blue, medium red, medium gray yellow ochre, flesh, and white.  I blocked in the sky using a #5 filbert brush. 

In this stage according the picture above I blocked the the sky in.  I used a liquitex slow dry medium to retard the drying process.  For the dark cloud color value I used a mixture of sky blue, medium gray a small amount of medium red. 

Here is the image of the painting before I altered the clouds and building.  I was not satisfied with the form of the cloud at the time they looked a little flat.  I reworked the clouds using a #4 round brush to blend and block in the form.  I premixed all the values of color for the clouds and applied the paint. 

For the cityscape in the foreground I used medium red, phthylocyanine blue and burnt umber.  I look at this cityscape in the fore ground and I said to myself, "It looks flat".  As a result I gave it a 3 dimensional perspective by mixing titanium and black to produce a gray hue.  I applied paint along the side on the right of the tallest buildings.  

Finally, for the reflective light I mix orange and yellow ochre and I used titanium white for the highly reflective light from the sunset.  I did this by using a #4 bright brush and a #2 liner brush. 

"Twilight Strike" done in acylic on stretched canvas @ 16"x20" DWeaverArt © 2018

Thank very much for reading this blog post I look forward to sharing with you more of my process and creations.  Please message me if you have any comments or questions about this painting through email at deeweaver15@gmail.com or share your comment below.  Thank you