By the end of reading this blog, you will be able to paint the most mesmerising clouds, that will transform any landscape painting. Even though this post is tailored to digital drawing in photoshop, the same concepts can be used across all media.
Now clouds can be a bit challenging to paint, but don’t worry, this guide will take you step by step and alongs as your open to making a few mistakes I can guarantee that you will be better at painting clouds by the end of it.
A few things to consider whilst painting clouds:
The good thing about panting clouds is that they are very forgiving in their shape. This means that you can paint them in pretty much any shape you want as they can take up pretty much any form. So for those of you who aren’t so good at sketching you need not to worry.
Now you can sketch a light outline of where you want your clouds, or you can go straight into blocking colour and sketch as you go. Either way, you want to take the middle value of the cloud (So the value between the brightest part and the darkest) and with this mid-tone you want to paint the whole cloud in. This will get you ready for step 2.
But before we get to step 2. One thing to bear in mind is that if clouds are in the background of your image they will appear more grey and desaturated this is due to the increasing amount of atmosphere and particles in the air that are closer to the earth that light has to interact with. So the opposite of that is true when objects are closer to you their value structure gets further apart making it very easy to distinguish separate objects.
Now what you want to do is add a new layer to your file (shift + alt + cmd + N, alternatively you can click new layer button), you can name this layer as shadows. Make sure this layer is above your previous layer, hover over it and press “alt” - an arrow should appear pointing towards the layer beneath, now click your left mouse key. This will create a clipping mask so when you paint you won’t go out of the lines of the previous layer.
Now choose a darker value and I would suggest a cooler one, so more into the blue range, you will probably end up with a cool grey. You can always change the temperature of the clouds at a later date anyway. Start painting in your shadows, this is the area where the sunlight cant get to as much, which will tend to be the bottom of the clouds, also in the centre of the clouds where there is a higher density making harder for light to pass through. But if the sun is beneath your clouds then your shadow won’t be on the bottom of them.
Now just as you painted in your shadows its time to do the same with the highlights. So start a new layer in photoshop, select your brush, and start painting in your highlights.
With your highlights you can add a slight warmth to them as the light from the sun isn’t pure white, so a slight off-white with a slight drop in value should be just fine (make sure this value is still brighter than your mid-tone though). Now paint sparingly with your highlights, as you don’t want to over do it. Try and find your larger shapes first before painting in the smaller formations in the clouds.
Once you have painted in your basic highlights and shadows you can now start to refine shapes within the cloud and within the shadows and highlights. You can do this in various ways in photoshop. You can either paint normally as you are already or you can use different blending modes on different layers. You would use “Multiply” for the deeper shadows and “Overlay” for the brighter highlights.
At this stage you can also use the “smudge” tool to help you soften edges whilst you paint clouds in photoshop. This will give them that fluffy edge, but at times can be time consuming if you have a lot of clouds to get through. Now good balance and contrast is key, so you want to aim for areas of softened edges and then areas of harsher purposeful edges, to add visual interest to your cloud painting.
Now stepping into the more advanced area. If you’re happy with the clouds that you have painted you can skill this step and go to step 5, or if you really want to achieve a real sense of realism and really make your clouds pop then take note.
Reflected light is the light that bounces off surrounding objects and comes back onto your subject. Reflected light at times can be very prominent but also very delicate and subtle in other scenarios.
For clouds, the top side of them maybe a slight blue colour/cooler in temperature when not in direct sunlight, as it is reflecting the colour of the sky. At sunset it maybe a warmer orangey red colour thats being reflected. Hence why at the start I wanted you to think about your scenario. Dependant on what is beneath the clouds and how low the clouds are to the surface of the earth, you may get a slight green tint if the clouds are above a tree line or grass area compared to a blue tint if above water.
When painting in reflected light it often has the same value as the area it is interacting with, just with a different hue. Sometimes the value can be slightly lighter or darker but that depends on the scene and what the artist interprets.
Due to painting digitally, why not make the most of it! Wouldn’t it be better to be able to save a lot of time painting clouds so you can focus your spare time on other areas. Not only that but do so with better and more realistic results.
This is why I encourage you to use specialised cloud brushes in photoshop. These brushes are designed to imitate cloud formations to provide you with a more realistic image.
If you got the tools there, I think you should use them. You can create all sorts of amazing images with them and you can definitely loose track of time whilst experimenting with them. No need to softened edges with the “Smudge” tool or concentrate too much on rendering the right shape of the cloud. You are only minutes away from creating thousands of variations of clouds.
Below is a FREE downloadable cloud brush to help you paint better clouds in photoshop
(And if you like that I have a whole set of 15 specialised cloud brushes for you to experiment with.)
