The Sky and Above: Learn to Paint Cumulonimbus Clouds!

Rather than giving a complete scientific description, there’s probably one important thing you need to know about these clouds: it creates a lot of weather patterns.

That is, most weather effects that you see, whether it is raining, snowing, lightning, or even the creation of tornados and hurricanes have been known to come out of these types of clouds due to its instability between updrafts and downdrafts.

Moreover, you will see these types of clouds over mountains and oceans, which should give you an idea of the application use for when you decide where to paint cumulonimbus clouds.

1. Painting characteristics

With cumulonimbus clouds, you need to know how that air flows up. That means these clouds, in addition to being huge, are vertical in nature. In addition, you may see an anvil type shape near the top where the air is pushing up.

Secondly, the edges of these clouds are very noticeable due to its high mass. That means you will need to paint using a high opacity setting on a brush with sharp edges instead blurry edges.

Another characteristic is height. These clouds will range between 5000 to 25000 feet up in the air. This knowledge will help you decide on the range of your skies.

With these tips, let’s start painting our cloud. We will create a blue gradient background because the higher you are, the ‘darker’ the atmosphere is due to it being closer to the pitch darkness of outer space.

2. Creating mass

The second part involves creating the mass of the clouds. To do that, you will need to paint in a circular manner. As well, do this in a new layer as there are few tricks you can use the help you out.

Remember, one defining characteristics is its natural ability to head vertically to the atmosphere. Basically, as you do circular motions with the brush, don’t forget to aim upwards to get this sense.

Of course, you have as many sections as you want. I opted for about three or four in this example.

To paint cumulonimbus clouds and its shadows correctly, I preserved the transparency of the layer, which allows me to preserve the shape of the clouds, and then used the gradient tool to fade it from white to gray.

The advantage is that it’ll help me out with knowing where to paint the light.

3. Painting the light

Anyway, the best place to start is on the edges of the cloud. You can keep the transparency option on or turn it off whenever necessary to preserve the edges.

Basically, the reason you start at the edges is mainly due to the penetration ability of light. That is, it’ll be strongest near the top where your light source most likely is, and then filters down to where the base of the cloud is.

Once more, use circular and arching brush strokes while gently working down.

Always keep in mind how you structure your mass of clouds. Switch between brush opacity and color to get the right amount of light.

You will initially use a white hue, but by the end of this process, you will end up with a grayish hue.

4. Final touches

The final stages, in learning how to paint cumulonimbus clouds, are applying a bit of color while continuing to define the cloud masses.

One strategy to get the right definition is to copy the layer, manipulate it somewhat, and merge it wit the current layer. Continue to do this to get the right cloud mass.

For the purest, you can still use the good old fashion paint brush to meet your needs. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if you can use the dodge and burn tools to get the right amount of light. The choice of tools is up to you.

Regardless, when all things are said and done, you will still need to practice. The more time you spend on learning how to paint cumulonimbus clouds, the better you will get at recognizing mass and how to define it using how the light hits the mass.

It really is good practice for creating a great foundation in 2d digital art!

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