How to Paint Epic Sky, Clouds & Weather 🌞 Ultimate Guide
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Hello!
I’m .avi. I work as a professional game illustrator and creating comics and webtoons is my hobby.
As you may have noticed in my other tutorials, I always start a painting by setting the basic colors of the sky.
That’s because as the global light source, the sky determines how colors change in the rest of the picture:
In this tutorial, I’ll show you how the colors of the sky change in time and weather conditions, how it affects the colors of objects and how to use these principles to tell interesting and dramatic stories through your painting.
I’m going to skip general landscape guidelines like composition, focal point, perspective, etc., as I have already covered these in my previous tutorial:
🌤️ Clouds
First, let’s talk about clouds as they're essential to painting the sky. The following isn’t a meteorological classification but an overview of cloud forms important to painting.
🌤️ Fluffy clouds
The most popular are the fleecy white clouds, often associated with good weather, summer, vacation and overall positive feeling. They come in mountain shapes 1️⃣ or as a flock of sheep 2️⃣.
Their form can be simplified as an accumulation of spheres of various sizes with a flat base. These spherical shapes can help you with shading them.
The sunlight gets reflected back on the parts that are in the shadows 1️⃣. Also, the water drops in the clouds scatter light inside the mass, making them translucent 2️⃣.
Don’t be afraid to add bright colors like orange in thinner parts of the cloud where the light shines through! 3️⃣
Stormy clouds are similar in form but more condensed, heavier and thus darker.
🌤️ Patchy and veil clouds
These kinds of clouds are usually thin and subtle, in most cases they don’t need any shading.
The secret to painting them with any kind of brush is to keep erasing as much as painting (switching to transparent color with the same brush) in order to achieve the delicate feeling.
🌤️ Fog and mist
Fog lying above the ground can be a great shortcut to adding depth to your landscape. You can use a simple soft brush for it.
In the morning when the fog stays in valleys, you can highlight the top of it by the rising sun.
🖌️ Free cloud brushes here: 🖌️
🌤️ Cloud layers
Using vertical layering of clouds is very effective in creating atmospheric depth.
The highest 3️⃣ and lowest clouds 1️⃣ tend to be patchy or veil-like, while the middle is occupied by the fluffy ones2️⃣.
This vertical distribution allows you to put some layers in shade while highlighting the others.
For example during sunset the lowest layer is already dark 1️⃣, the middle can still be lit at their top 2️⃣, while the highest are strongly illuminated by the setting sun 3️⃣:
💡Quick tip #1: Dynamic clouds
Clouds can contribute a lot to the dynamic composition of your painting!
Draw them following a set of curves leading the viewer through your painting. If you don’t get them right on the first try, you can use the free transform and liquify tool to tweak their shapes.
🟦 Colors of the cloudless sky
Contrary to common belief the sky itself doesn’t go from yellow to red to dark blue during sunset. This misconception comes from photos, which have a very limited color range and are often over-contrasted.
If you want to study the sky, don’t use photos, look at the sky with your own eyes and you’ll be surprised how many details photos miss!
In reality, the color gradient of the sky is usually very subtle all over at one point in time, especially concerning light and dark colors. Only the horizons tend to be lighter due to particles in the atmosphere.
Artists often darken the top of their paintings as a vignette to bring the focus to the main focal point. Putting a dark cloud at the top is another way to create the vignette effect.
🌍 Colors of the sky in time
Let’s take a look at how the colors of the sky change in time.
During the day cycle, the sunrays have to travel different distances through the atmosphere, which affects the colors we see.
As you know, the light is made up of colors of the rainbow, with red having the longest wavelength while blue and violet the shortest.
As the sun rises, the blue of short wavelengths gets scattered in the long travel through the atmosphere 1️⃣, leaving mostly red and yellows reaching our eyes 2️⃣.
That’s why the morning sky often has a peachy tint and the clouds, as well as anything the sunrays land on, turn orange.
At noon the sun is at its highest point from our perspective, meaning that the light travels a shorter distance through the atmosphere 1️⃣ than during sunrise.
Because of that, all colors in the sun rays reach our eyes 2️⃣, and only a portion of violet and blue gets scattered in the atmosphere, creating the blue sky and the warm, slightly yellowish light illuminating the landscape, so typical for summer afternoons.
Sunset is basically the same as sunrise.
☀️ Painting sky at different times of day
Now that we have seen how light changes on its travel through the atmosphere, let’s put the knowledge to practice!
Just keep in mind that there are countless kinds of sky and clouds color combinations, especially for sunrise and sunset, and the paintings presented here are just basic examples of how to use the general principles mentioned before.
💡Quick tip #2: Break gradients
If you’re using the gradient tool for filling the sky, I recommend blending it with a big blending brush or repainting it slightly by picking and dabbing colors here and there to break up the linear form of the gradient.
It will give a much more natural feel to your painting!
☀️ Dawn
Before the sun rises, the sky brightens up at the horizon 1️⃣. Notice how the sky color affects the landscape 2️⃣ – it’s mostly dark blue, and the only actual source of light are the lights from the city 3️⃣. The fog in the valleys 4️⃣ contribute to the atmospheric depth of the picture. As the sun is still beyond the horizon, it only illuminates the clouds higher in the atmosphere 5️⃣.
☀️ Sunrise
When the sun shows up, the sky is already bright, usually a soft blue color 1️⃣. The atmospheric particles closer to the ground can turn yellowish 2️⃣. The orange-tinted sunlight hits the highest points 3️⃣ in the landscape, leaving the valleys still in the shadow, often hidden with a layer of fog 4️⃣. The overall colors are soft.
☀️ Morning (before noon)
As explained earlier, as the sun goes up, the sky turns blue 1️⃣ and the light illuminating the landscape is white with a yellowish tint 2️⃣. Some foggy haze can still linger near the ground, making the colors soft.
☀️ Noon and afternoon
With the sun at the zenith, the sky is the deepest blue 1️⃣. Most of the haze has evaporated by now, making the colors of the whole scene the most vivid.
Clouds can cast shadow not only on one another, but on the ground as well. Use the patches of light and shadow on the landscape 2️⃣ to create an interesting effect that adds depth to your picture.
☀️ Sunset
Similar to sunrise, the sky is still bright 1️⃣ but the color of the light shifts to yellow and red 2️⃣. While the valleys dip into shadow 3️⃣, the tips of the hills and the clouds are still lit by the sunlight 4️⃣, turning them all kinds of pink, orange, yellow and reddish colors.
☀️ Dusk
Just like at dawn, when the sun hides beyond the horizon, the sky starts turning darker 1️⃣ and only the highest clouds are lit by the last sunrays 2️⃣. The lights of the city become the most prominent light source once again 3️⃣.
🌌 Night sky
A night sky can be light or dark depending on the amount of clouds, their altitude and the presence of the moon and artificial lighting.
🌌 City lights
City lights are capable of illuminating the bottom of the lower layer of clouds 1️⃣, making the sky above it quite bright. You can use this to hint on a city hidden beyond the mountains 2️⃣.
🌌 Moon and stars
When the moon is out, it illuminates the clouds and landscape with its pale light. 1️⃣
The night sky can be quite the playground for artists! Draw stars of various colors on a layer in some of the lightening modes (Add glow, Screen, etc.) to make them shine. 2️⃣
🌌 Galaxy
Drawing a galaxy is quite simple too – you can use special brushes like this one…
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… Or just any star and cloud brush:
On a lightening layer draw a strip of clouds and erase the middle of the strip. On another layer set to Add glow or similar mode, draw the stars.
This set up creates the effect of the galaxy consisting of clouds of stardust lit by the surrounding stars.
🌌 Northern lights (Aurora)
Another effect, the Northern lights, or Aurora, is a little tricky but once you understand its principles, it’s actually easy. The dancing veils of light 1️⃣ are perpendicular to the Earth’s surface 2️⃣, their base is flat 3️⃣ and their color tends to change from top to bottom 4️⃣.
You can use motion blur or even radial ruler to draw them, or you can get my free Aurora brush which I created to reflect two of the phenomenon’s features:
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Pick two colors (I recommend teal and purple) and draw swirls coming from the horizon on an Add glow or similar layer.
With pen pressure, try to make the distant parts smaller than the closer parts.
Afterwards, use free transform and eventually the liquify tool to add perspective to the veils.
Use a clipped layer to change colors or darken parts as you like.
⛈️ Weather
Weather and its specifics are very important to telling a story through your painting.
Weather conditions significantly change the light and colors, as well as add effects like snow, rain or thunder, as shown in the following set of paintings.
⛈️ Foggy morning
A typical winter morning where everything is covered by thick fog 1️⃣. The colors are significantly dimmed, the distant elements turn invisible 2️⃣, the light is diffused and shadows disappear. In these conditions the sky gradient is reversed, making the top lighter as that’s where the sun can only shine through 3️⃣.
The whole scene can be tinted to any color, however, purplish colors make it appear colder.
I’ve made a whole tutorial dedicated to snow (brushes included) so I’ll conclude the snow phenomena here :)
⛈️ Cold sunrise
When the fog isn’t as thick, winter sunrise or sunset can also show blue sky 1️⃣ and orange clouds 2️⃣. However, all colors are dimmed.
As you can see, this gradient goes from tealish grey to yellowish grey, and the horizon itself is actually darker 3️⃣ than the rest because the sun hasn’t penetrated the layer of fog yet.
⛈️ Rain
Similar to foggy weather, the colors are dimmed and shadows and lights diffused. The clouds are dark, heavy and relatively low in the sky.
The trick is to paint the sky lighter at first, and then add darker and darker masses of the clouds.
For the rain effect itself, you can download many brushes, use a parallel ruler or any scatter brush blurred with motion blur.
Remember that everything is wet and glossy 1️⃣, so don’t forget to draw splashes on surfaces 2️⃣, dripping water 3️⃣ and clumps of fog along the ground 4️⃣.
⛈️ Storm
Storms are often dramatic and allow you to play around with the darkened sky with heavy clouds, raindrops changing directions and stuff flying in the wind, and, most importantly, lightning!
There are many lightning brushes for download, but you can draw it easily with a basic brush:
Aim for zig-zag shapes, avoid roundness and regularity by erasing parts and edges with the same brush.
Once you’re happy with the shape, duplicate the lightning layer, set it to Screen or Add glow and blur it with Gaussian blur filter.
Don’t forget that lightning is a source of light that illuminates everything around. The sharp contrast between the dark areas and the parts lit by the lightning is a very powerful dramatic effect!
⛈️ After storm
Another dramatic effect is rays of light coming through the gaps of dark clouds 1️⃣. It gives off the feeling of hope and calm after the storm has passed.
You can also use it to highlight something in the landscape, like in this picture, where the light on a town building 2️⃣ easily tells us that the cat has endured an arduous journey and finally arrives in the valley where his home is.
🌈 Rainbow
Rainbow forms when raindrops refract sunlight. However, it has several specifics that have to be kept in mind.
I found an ancient speedpainting of mine where there are two things completely wrong about the rainbow. Can you guess them?
First, the order of the colors is reversed.
As red has the longest wavelength, it’s always on the outside while purple and blue is on the inside:
That is, for the primary rainbow. Sometimes we can see a secondary rainbow way above the primary, which has colors reversed – the red is inside and purple outside:
The second thing wrong is that it’s even there – a rainbow can form only when the sunlight is low and behind our backs, typically after a rain shower in the morning or in late afternoon:
The low sun tends to tint colors to yellow 1️⃣. To make the rainbow pop out more, keep the rain clouds darker 2️⃣ and light only the parts directly hit by sunlight 3️⃣.
For drawing rainbows let’s get help from the Concentric circle ruler in Special Rulers. You can use rainbow brushes (there’s a default one), or with a simple brush draw arcs along the ruler, each of one of the 7 rainbow colors.
Blur it with Gaussian blur filter. Try setting the layer to different blending modes to see which works best and erase unnecessary parts.
I recommend keeping the rainbow on the subtle side as a soft hint on the colors feels much more magical than a whole arch of saturated colors.
✨ Stylize and exaggerate!
Once you’ve understood the principles of colors and light in the sky, clouds and weather, it’s time to build on the knowledge to fit your artistic intentions!
Tweak the cloud shapes to make them even more dynamic and cartoonish for animation!
These clouds are the same type, built on the same principles: flat base 1️⃣, puffy bubbly shapes growing upwards 2️⃣, parts torn by the wind 3️⃣…
But all these features have been exaggerated and stylized for clean and dynamic expression!
The same goes for the sky colors – don’t be afraid to make colors more prominent than they are!
Add pink, orange or teal tints to your white clouds to make them even more interesting.
Shift the sky colors towards green or purple for more variety!
Thanks for watching!
Now set your imagination loose and have a lot of fun stylizing the forms and colors of clouds, weather and sky to achieve the best expression of your scene possible!
🌟⭐✨ If you enjoyed this tip, it will make me happy if you give a like so that I know I’m doing things right, eventually leave a comment on where I could improve :) ✨⭐🌟
In case you were wondering, the birds in the cover picture is another of my free brushes :)
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🎆 BONUS: timelapse video of these sky paintings 🎆
For those who wanted to support me, I don’t have a Patreon nor I plan to get one. I’m doing this purely for the fun of sharing knowledge :)
I appreciate your messages and thoughts very much, though, thank you!
(´。• ◡ •。`) ♡
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