Morning Clouds, La Reunion

The morning clouds were rolling into ile de la Reunion, illuminated by the pink light of the rising sun they reached high into the sky billowing above the topaz sea. Gee, this painting blog is turning into a cheesy poetry blog all of a sudden. This is the view from the back patio of the apartment, not a bad place to have a coffee in the morning. Most of the day it is sunny here or partly cloudy, although sometimes in the afternoon the clouds roll over and there can be flash rain storms. So far we have been lucky with the weather though, as this painting suggests.

I put most of the effort into painting the clouds... to begin I put down the blue sky roughly outlining the white clouds, then used a damp brush to soften the edges of the clouds to give them the cottony-appearance. When partly dry I dropped in the golden pink followed by darker shadow tones which are a mix of cerulean blue and rose matter genuine with a touch of lemon yellow. When these layers were mostly dry I put on the thin dark clouds over top, and by using lifting techniques created the thin white clouds that streak across the top. The humidity here on top of the mountain is actually quite low, so the paint dried fast enough to make this complex multi-layer approach. If the humidy is high you need to think of a simpler strategy.

5x7" cold press 2011