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How to Paint Colorful Skies with Watercolors

How to Paint a Sunset Sky
August 11, 2022

The palette of watercolors I use works for a variety of colorful skies.

From simple blue skies, wispy cirrus clouds and cumulus clouds, to colorful sunsets.

1. How to Paint a Simple Blue Sky?

When I started painting, my teacher suggested we paint a sky a day. By experimenting and painting more skies it has helped me break through my fear of painting skies and opened possibilities for painting beautiful skies.

When painting a simple blue sky – I still tend to add a little bit of wet-in-wet atmosphere and vary my colors. It’s always good to “get in and get out.”

How to Paint a Simple Blue Sky

2. How to Paint Wispy Cirrus Clouds?

My favorite go to sky is wet-in-wet using cobalt blue to simply paint around the wispy cirrus clouds.

How to Paint Wispy Cirrus Clouds Painting Whispy Cirrus Clouds

3. How to Paint Yellow and Gray Skies?

Sometimes you don’t want a blue sky, you may want a sky that goes with your color choices such as peach or yellow or even grey.

painting a yellow sky Painting Gray Skies

4. How To Paint a Sky with Cumulus Clouds?

Cumulus clouds are fun to paint using more wet-on-dry techniques to capture the shapes that continue to change all day. Like mountains in the sky.

How to Paint Cumulus Clouds How To Paint a Sky with Clouds

5. How to Paint a Sunset Sky?

Sunsets tend to be warm around the sun then it will get cooler the further away you get from the sun so you use a spectrum of colors.

How to Paint a Sunset Sky How to Paint Lighthouse Sunset

– This article is a guest post submission from Chelsea Lamb


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Watercolor illustration of poppies with flowing lines and vibrant colors.

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Quick Sketch Watercolor Poppies

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