EXAMPLE ONE
White Clouds in a Blue Sky, watercolour, 7310½in (18326.5cm)
Before starting to paint, it is advisable to make a small pencil sketch of the proposed sky composition for guidance. Here I used one brush, one colour, and a pot of water.
A
Wet the paper surface fairly liberally with clean water using a large brush. If the paper is tilted head-up by about 10 degrees during the wetting, excess water will drain off without puddling. With a fully loaded brush (size 10 or 12) start where you want the strongest tone to be
B
Move to an adjacent area with progressively lighter tone – the water on the paper dilutes the pigment as you proceed. The stronger tones in the sky are usually in the upper half, diminishing down towards the horizon. You may need to recharge the brush, but make sure that the pigment is less concentrated than the first brushload. The outline of a cloud is irregular and remember that you are rendering a negative shape (white puffy cotton wool). Do not worry about stray edges because subsequent diffusion of the paint at the edge of the clouds will soften and smooth out any irregularities, even the odd sharp, angular bits
C
Just stick generally to the planned shapes in your sketch. Allow a little more white space for each cloud to compensate for the diffusion of the blue paint. For example, if you had a cloud two inches wide at the beginning, you might be left with an inch-wide cloud after the diffusion. To create an illusion of clouds receding into the distance, use the lower third of your sky composition to paint narrow clouds becoming progressively flatter towards the horizon. This can be depicted quite loosely with a few horizontal brushstrokes