Day 10: Clouds 1

This is the painting for Day 10 #stradaeasel

Another warm day! I couldn’t believe it when I checked the thermometer and it was 38 degrees. Even better, the sun was filtering through the puffy whites.

I went back to my sister’s lot because they have such a nice, wide open view into Woods Bay and the point. Of course, the weather keeps moving along—there’s a saying here: “If you don’t like the weather, just wait 15 minutes.” By the time, I got out there and set up, the clouds were bunching up and the wind was starting to blow.

I chose to do a smaller pastel so that I wouldn’t have to be in the wind any longer than necessary. Since the clouds were moving, I chose one view and stuck with it. Keeping in mind the dark blue sky in the upper left and some filtering cyan blue between the clouds.

After an hour, I was starting to get chilled so I packed it up and headed back into the studio. After a break to warm up, I started thinking about how I would paint it in oil. No better way to find out than to just do it. It was interesting that I could blend the clouds fairly easily but not the sky blue background with oil. Hmmm, I’ll have to research that one.

After completing the oil painting, I liked how I highlighted the clouds in a slightly more exaggerated manner. I applied those same highlights to the pastel painting.

This was the scene as I painted it. I had just finished and snapped the photo before putting my pastels back into the box. By the time I got back to the house, the sun came out again!