As a kid I used to stare at the clouds. At my mother’s urging my brother and I used to imaging them fantastic creature- unicorns, knights and dragons. How much of it was stuff we really saw and how much of it we were making up is up for debate but even as a child I Ioved the sky. A couple of months ago I was getting our mail, the banality of bills delivered to my front door and the urban surroundings was a stark contrast to the sky as the sun set over coastal Massachusetts.

The sky was bright cad orange and magenta against deep purple clouds. I vowed I’d do some sky paintings.

What I learned was that the sky changes fast as the sun rises or sets, giving you about 15 minutes to complete a sketch, study or thumbnail before the scene completely changes. Capturing the sky is harder than it sounds. I moved to smaller sheets of paper, working fast and loose in acrylic on 5×7 inch pieces of gesso’d paper or watercolor paper. I’ve grown to love the challenge.

What I hope to do is capture a great deal of sketche3s and turn them into finished paintings like this one I’ve put up on artfire. It’s larger size of 11.75×8.5 inches is small but still larger sized than the sketches, allowing me to work loose and freely. I’m more able to capture the glow of the clouds than I can in the small size. I’m hoping to do a lot more of these in larger sizes. The sketches are the first step, the next step is bigger stuff!