Learn How to Paint the Sky Digitally!

Wouldn't it be cool to learn how to paint the sky after you understand basic structures of clouds? This lesson will teach you how to paint clouds in a way to create a beautiful sky!

We are going to use three different types of cloud characteristics for painting the sky: wisp-like cirrus clouds, bunched up cumulus clouds, and fog-like stratus clouds.

This should give you enough variety to play with as you create a fantasy atmosphere on your own. On top of that, we are going to use the most basic digital art tools so you can start painting skies immediately.

Let's get started on learning how to paint the sky right away!

1. The background color

The best way to start is to fill up your background layer with a gradient from dark blue to light blue. Look for a gradient fill tool in your digital art program to fill in the layer quickly and efficiently.

At first, you may have blues that are too light or too dark in some areas. What you can do is just do some color adjustments to make it the right color.

If it's too bright, de-saturate it a little. If it's too dull, add some contrast. Once you have a background that you are satisfied with, you can start blocking in the shapes of the clouds.

I would recommend blocking to be done with a chalk brush as that will give you good textures to work with as you build on each brush stroke.

There are several things you can do to paint a sky: swiping gently across the canvas will create suggestive wispy clouds while blocking in certain sections will create cumulus clouds.

I've also added some directional strokes to give a dynamic sky.

2. Paint the sky with smaller brushes

This step of learning how to paint the sky will require a lot of time on your part as you will be switching between different sizes of the chalk brush.

Note: personally, I think it's best to do it all in one layer as it allows you to sample colors more easily!

Before you start drawing any details, in circular motions, use the smudge brush with the chalk head to create your cloud shapes.

Then, switch to a round brush and gently glaze over the smudged clouds with your digital paint brush using the background colors sampled at that altitude. This will help dull the colors a bit.

Now, go back to your chalk head and begin working on little details. Create bumps of light to form cumulus clouds and longer streaks of light to form wispy clouds.

If any of the colors get too intense, switch back to a large round brush and glaze over the details a bit.

You will also need to switch back to the smudge tool to fade out certain areas to create the effect of dynamic clouds.

After that, it's just a process of repainting and repeating the process of switching between painting, glazing, and smudging with various sized chalk brushes!

3. Creating intensity

At this point, you can pretty much say that you're done as you have learned how to paint the sky using the most basic tools possible!

However, you feel as though it looks fairly dull as it seems all the clouds are exactly the same value. Therefore, you decide to bring out certain clouds close to the view by enhancing the light values.

The best way to do this is to use your dodge and burn tools.

With the dodge tool, gently glaze over and area to bring out the light closer to the foreground. At the same time, you can use the burn tool to increase the overall hues of the background.

Again, the chalk heads are the best type of brushes to block out light textures.

As always, if some of the areas seem too strong with details, glaze over it with a large round brush to push back the colors.

4. Adding additional colors

With all those nice cloud textures, you can consider your digital painting done. However, you feel as though there are bits of color you can add to further increase the atmosphere.

If you want to follow along, here's what I did. On a large round brush, I personally decided to paint a warm heat source at one side to contrast all the blue hues present.

With the large round brush, I set the blend mode of your brush to 'color' and gently glaze over a section of your sky with a nice purple hue.

Even with that done, I feel as though I can add more. For most artists, you need something to give your sky some sense of scale.

On a different layer, I painted some crystal towers to give it the clouds an added dimension of magnitude.

I also introduced some stratus clouds near the bottom to create a hazy environment and to give it some more added depth.

When you're doing this much to paint the sky, remember that color does reflect off your object. That means you have to make sure to sample colors from the sky and paint it onto your object.

Remember the basics of using your chalk brushes to get good details and the round brush to link colors together.

I hope you enjoy this lesson on how to paint the sky with your simple digital art tools. Just let your imagination and your strong artistic foundations create the environment you need!

I look forward to your painting. Please submit it to this site's online gallery as a means to communicate with me about your progress!

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