How To Draw Clouds With Prismacolor Pencils

Two of the more pop posts here are How to Depict Thunderhead Clouds in graphite, and How to Describe a Articulate Heaven with Colored Pencil. Today, we'll combine those two subjects with a tutorial showing you how to describe clouds with colored pencil.

In a blue sky, of grade!

About the Demonstration Art

The sample study was painted on Canson Mi-Teintes 98lb paper, Azure. If yous utilise Canson Mi-Teintes, make sure to employ the shine side. You can employ the front if yous wish, only the texture will be more hard to work with and finishing volition take longer.

My cloud report is quite small, 4″ 10 2.75″, and is a Cartoon of the Calendar week. I used a combination of layering and solvent blending, along with the straight method.

It was besides the first fourth dimension I'd used Canson Mi-Teintes' Azure newspaper, which is a very soft, low-cal shade of blueish.

How to Draw Clouds with Colored Pencil

Step ane: Lightly outline the clouds and state and shade the sky.

Apply very low-cal pressure to outline the clouds and the horizon. Yous tin use the same color for both, or use a medium blue to outline the clouds and medium gray-green to outline the horizon.

Go along the edges somewhat soft since clouds very rarely take crisp edges.

TIP: Use at least two shades of bluish, ane medium and 1 light. The colors you choose should reflect the colour of the sky yous're cartoon, since skies are not the same shade of blue everywhere.

Next, shade the sky with the aforementioned blue yous used to outline the clouds. Employ light pressure and the stroke that gives you the near even color. Start at the superlative with a sharp pencil and layer color about three-quarters of the fashion down the sky. Piece of work advisedly around the clouds.

Follow that with a lighter value blue. Commencement at the summit again, but this time, layer blueish all the way to the horizon.

If you're using a very light blueish, kickoff at the horizon and layer that upward to a little past the halfway marker.

Apply light pressure level with all the colors and exercise at least two layers of each, rotating through the colors as you work. You want smooth gradations in color and value.

Step ii: Lift a few more clouds with mounting putty.

Employ mounting putty to elevator a little colour from the sky to create thin, wispy clouds if you wish.

Shape the putty into pocket-sized shapes, printing it lightly against the paper, then reshape it. If you don't, y'all may stop up with a pattern of lifted colour that's too regular in shape to look like clouds.

Step 3: Alloy with odorless mineral spirits or other art solvent.

You can use a brush (the about mutual mode.) Dip the brush into a lilliputian solvent, then "paint" it over the color. The solvent dissolves the color and allows the unlike shades of blueish to mix near like paint.

I used a cotton fiber swab instead of a brush. In the blueish at the top, I tapped the color repeatedly with the stop of the swab. Likewise many times, equally it turned out, because I began lifting colour (as you can meet below.)

In the residual of the heaven, I rolled the side of the cotton wool along the sky in horizontal strokes. Once to moisten the color, so once again to blend it.

If you lifted color to create light, wispy clouds, work around them unless you lot want to reshape them past blending into them. Don't moisture them completely.

TIP: If you demand to soften edges, blend over them as shown around the clouds effectually the center patch of blue sky, and in the clouds leading toward the upper, correct corner.

Step 4: Proceed layering and blending until the blue sky is finished.

Layer color and blend with solvent, until the sky is finished to your satisfaction.

If you lot demand to, you can also do the final alloy with a colorless blender.

Step five: Draw the landscape using the same methods.

Draw the mural using the aforementioned layering and blending method. The mural is actually the stage for the main bailiwick, the clouds, and so y'all don't need to put a lot of particular into it.

Since this tutorial is nigh the clouds and not the land, I'll evidence the kickoff round of colour, and the finished landscape.

I did three or four rounds of layering color and blending with solvent to reach this point (beneath.) The mural isn't completely finished, just I'll do the clouds before making whatever changes to either the heaven or the landscape.

Stride 6: Shade the night values in the clouds

Carefully sketch in and shade the darkest values in the clouds with a medium value bluish-grayness colour. Use a abrupt pencil and put down multiple layers to create a variety of values.

Pay close attention to the overlap of clouds. Each set of clouds is dissimilar, so don't rush, and don't describe generic clouds.

After you lot've put three or four layers of color into the shadows and darker heart values, alloy with solvent.

Pace 7: Layer the same blue, a medium gray, and a lighter grayness-blue into the shadows and darker values.

Darken the shadows and darker middle values with alternating layers of the same blue you used in Step six, plus a medium gray, and a gray-blue lighter than the previous blue.

Focus your attention on the shadows, but also layer the two shades of blue into the middle values.

Very lightly layer the lighter blueish into the lighter heart values.

Footstep 8: Alloy with solvent, and pull dissolved colour into the lighter parts of the clouds.

Alloy with solvent. Absorb the castor before touching the newspaper to remove backlog solvent.

Begin blending in the darkest areas. Observe the edges of those shapes carefully, especially where they overlap lighter areas.

As well pull color from the darker center values into the lighter heart values to create even lighter heart values. Work around the white areas. They will be the highlights in the clouds, so you need to preserve them.

Step 9: Go on layering and blending until you get the color, values, and saturation yous want.

Since this small piece was a study and a Drawing of the Week, I didn't push the details. The finished study, below, represents two more rounds of layering color and blending with solvent.

I finished by burnishing the clouds with a light blueish Prismacolor pencil. Prismacolor because they're wax-based, and good for burnishing. Light blue to unify the values in the clouds and considering the color was just the correct touch for the hint of shadow in the brightest office of the clouds.

As already mentioned, this is but a color study, and then isn't as detailed as a larger painting.

But information technology is enough to tell me this type of painting is not only fun to do, but worth expanding into a larger, more complex piece.

Conclusion

Learning how to draw clouds is a challenging, but satisfying process. You'll have an endless variety of subjects, even with the same cloud, since they change so quickly.

It's likewise an excellent way to improve your powers of observation, and you power to sketch and draw quickly.

In other words, it's well worth the time!

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Carrie L. Lewis

Carrie L. Lewis has been an artist longer than she can recall. An oil painter from her teens, she began using colored pencils because they were ideal for highly detailed piece of work, and were easier to transport and apply at horse shows. She now uses colored pencils well-nigh exclusively. From the kickoff, horse were a favorite subject field, and she's been an equine portrait artist for most of her career. When she began cartoon with colored pencil (and subsequently a move to Kansas,) she found special beauty in landscapes, and landscapes are now what she draws about often. The rugged Flintstone Hills region of eastern Kansas is at the top of her list of beautiful places to visit and depict.