“Lighting up the sky while painting with acrylics can be accomplished with ease,” she said. Until I learned to add acrylic glazing liquid, I would never have thought it so easy.

Clouds can be tricky because in the sky they are forever changing shape, form, color, and detail. In this lesson, we gathered firsthand experience with using the underpainting to our advantage for letting the light shine.

The underpainting for this cloud painting began with a very warm red/orange. Then the blue/green to blue sky was painted over the red/orange underpainting leaving one area about middle right to remain red/orange. Along the lower three inches of this work, a dull purple was used over the red/orange. If you examine the greenish-blue sky tones closely, you can still see some of the red/orange tones. And where the red/orange is covered by clouds in white to creme tones, the glazing liquid was added to the paint, creating a translucent effect.

Overall, the sky becomes lit by a morning sunrise, and the warmth of that experience can be felt in this piece. Demonstrating this technique for lighting up the sky during a recent painting session certainly brought a lot of “a-ha” moments from my students.

This class called: LIGHT UP THE SKY is only one in my repertoire of acrylic painting lessons held monthly at the Gilmer Art Center in downtown Ellijay, Georgia. Stop by in person some Friday to see what we are up to. Or visit the Gilmer Arts Website https://gilmerarts.com/art-gallery/#classes to browse all the art classes on the schedule and follow my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ArtwBecca/events.

1st Photo: red/orange underpainting and blue/green sky underground with underpainting glimpse.

2nd Photo: 2 layers of white clouds painted over the underground using additive: acrylic glazing liquid.