“Sail Away!” Sky painting in Acrylic (12/300)

Sky painting with the color of the lavender

A couple of nights ago, I had a sudden idea coming into my mind. Actually, it was a thing I had in mind for a long time. But only that night, it materialized into a concrete idea. I was thinking of a sky that contains a mix of blue, pink, purple and white. This felt for me like a dreamy sky that you would see in Heaven or in the happy places of your dreams. And, along with the vastness of that sky, I imagined many soft clouds like cotton candy. However, this image felt incomplete without the vessel of my dreams. The main subject of the sky painting is an antique ship sailing a cold ocean.

Perhaps, it’s because now it’s winter I imagine that the water of the ocean is cold. But we will also paint some aquamarine beings swimming in the ocean.

I also accompanied this article with a video to see the entire painting process of this acrylic clouds and sky painting.

Materials for the sky painting:

• white acrylic paint
• primary red magenta acrylic paint
• primary blue cyan acrylic paint
• carbon black acrylic paint
• pink acrylic paint
• light blue acrylic paint
• canvas
• 2 brushes, flat one, and a fine-detail brush
• inspiration
• music of choice

The painting steps

First, I had to cover the painting with white. I reused a canvas. Wanted to paint something else, but I will postpone that project. After painting the canvas with white, we begin painting the sky. I mixed blue, pink, white, red magenta and cyan blue in various proportions. You should have the colors distributed unevenly on the canvas, but you must blend the colors.

Use a flat brush and mix the colors until the color looks like a gradient. Use white paint to pass from a color to another. I left the center area whiter because I imagined a galaxy in the middle of the painting. You don’t have to make the same move if you don’t want to.

Next, I sprinkled some white paint to create some stars. After adding the stars we paint the acrylic clouds using white paint.

Start painting the top of the clouds and dilute the paint as you go to the bottom. I used a small brush for details. Although I think any other brush is efficient for this step, I like to use the thin one for clouds.

For the bottom of the clouds, use a paint wash of white. This means you must dilute white with more water. It’s similar to the watercolor techniques.

We want to paint the lower area of the clouds, but don’t want to make it too opaque. It’s important to maintain the transparent impression and to make the clouds looks foggy and fluffy.

The next step is painting the ocean. On this step, you should use the same color you used for the sky but a little darker. Since the ocean will reflect the color of the sky, we will use the same colors. Use more blue and white on the top of the ocean, so it looks cold, even frozen.

After painting the ocean we can start painting the ship. I recommend you to use a detail brush for this step. For reference, I looked for a ship drawing on the internet and copied visually the shape. Draw with the brush the shape of the boat and then fill in with the flat brush. I used black paint for the ship painting. With the small brush, you can paint mermaids and small fish swimming in the sea. In the end, use white strokes to create small waves.

 

 

I hope you like my painting. But if you don’t feel that my instructions are very clear, you can also watch my video tutorial on how to paint this artwork. You can also subscribe to my youtube channel because I am publishing painting videos, almost daily.

Thank you!