Sky and cloud studies

After having drawn, sketched and painted a few of the mixed media sky studies in pastel, pencil, pen, watersoluble graphite and neopastels, I assembled them in a collage. I've been making these small studies of skies and clouds for the past couple of weeks (see my first post on this here). Most of them were done in the morning from my living room window. But I continued with them when I was in Germany.
Most of them are on gessoed bristol board which I had prepared for pastel paintings - the vast majority of them are small, ranging from 6x8cm to 15x15cm, with only a couple the size of my sketchbook or A4.


Collage of Window to the Sky studies #1-24

This has been a curious experience, in terms of subject matter, medium and scale. As clouds on the Scottish West Coast move pretty fast, it made me look for generic pattern, shape and light quickly and then decide on a couple of formations to get down on paper - I often did one, two or three studies in one go (which helped when the first ones didn't end up the way I'd wanted them). The watersoluble neopastels and graphite pencil have become a firm favourite for sketching - in particular on the prepared board their pigments grip nicely onto the tooth of the paper and produce interesting effects when brushed over with a waterpen:


WTTS #4, mixed media on board, 15x15cm, detail

I did a few evening skies when in Germany, most notably, the pastel sketch Am Abend. After observing and trying to get the skies down on paper, I surprised myself at how easy I found to see colour variation, the subtleties that make clouds appear three dimensional and the various shades of blue, purple and grey that denote good weather clouds or rain.