In depth Painting clouds

Gouache

Discover how to paint clouds in gouache with JUSTIN DONALDSON, who uses a wet-in-wet technique to capture a variety of edge qualities

Working as a fine artist. I use gouache, poster colour, oil and open-acrylics in my everyday adventure with painting. The only thing that I love nearly as much as painting is sitting down and pondering how paintings work on a fundamental level, and then how I can communicate these ideas with my many students. I’ve created a number of online courses around painting with gouache, and painting landscapes, and I have something up my sleeve that I have created just for you.

In this workshop I’ll show you some of the major ideas that I like to use when I’m creating landscape paintings in gouache, with a focus on cumulonimbus clouds. Clouds are a difficult subject to paint at the best of times. They’re full of a massive variety of edge qualities, from lost edges to hard edges. For those of us who use gouache, being able to paint consistently with soft edges provides a particular challenge since it’s the nature of gouache to dry very quickly. Don’t fear though – there are a few tricks that I’m going to show you in order to be able to combat this particular difficulty. While what I’m about to show you might seem simple at first, I want you to sit down, have a cup of tea, and ponder how you can apply these ideas to an even wider array of subject matter.