Skies aren’t just blue. They constantly change colors over time and with weather conditions. Capturing that complexity in your landscape sketches can feel less daunting if you have a few go-to color combinations that can be used for a variety of atmospheric effects and moods, like sunrise, clouds, overcast weather, fog. Here are some of my favorite mixing combinations for painting skies – of course there are many more possibilities.
Cerulean Blue + Yellow Ochre
This is a lovely combination for sunrise scenes when you already have a blue sky, but there’s this glowing yellow band around the sun and on the horizon. I often reach for Yellow Ochre instead of yellow because it creates a rounder, more earthy color, but you can also use a yellow, it adds brightness.
Cerulean Blue + Yellow Ochre + Vermilion
If you add a warm red like Vermilion to the pigments above, you get a very versatile mix that can create a warm or cool gray, it changes depending on how much of each pigment you add. It’s a rather muted mix, so very useful for overcast days, backgrounds or shadows with a soft contrast, but also for clouds. The pigment combination leads to a beautiful and unexpected separation of the individual components. You can also adapt this mix, like I did in the image at the very top: I used a darker, cooler red (Perylene Red deep) and added Ultramarine Blue to the mix.
Cobalt Blue + Burnt Sienna
For a slightly darker gray mix the combination of Cobalt Blue and Burnt Sienna can create quite effective cloud mixes or distant elements. Of course, adding a warm or cool red (pink) here is also possible, this will create more moody shadows or dramatic cloud formations.
I’d love to hear about your favorite and most used combinations for sky colors!
P.S. Thank you so much everyone for the incredibly kind comments and emails after my last post. It really means a lot! <3
Hi Julia! It’s always so good to read your blog posts. I have several travel palettes I work from and I realize yesterday that I didn’t have a deep red and missed it. But I have always been confused with yellows. If I have to limit my colors a bit (which is always true) I usually have DS hansa med or nickel azo, sometimes new gamboge and then an earthy yellow: monte amiata and sometimes quin gold. I’ve never used yellow ochre before. What are the different properties of why you would choose yellow ochre over a raw sienna? And then maybe I should have a lemon yellow? I tend to lean towards transparent colors over opaque and some intentional granulating colors. I would love your thoughts.
That’s an excellent question Betty, I think I’ll write a blog post about yellows + yellow earth colors! I find having a yellow earth (like yellow ochre, or saw sienna – it’s almost the same) in my palette in addition to a yellow very useful, at least for nature subjects and landscapes.
I am discovering the beauty of using yellow ochre and raw sienna, too!
cannot read handwriting if paints at all on sky colors
It’s literally in the blog post: Cerulean blue, perylene red deep, and yellow ochre. Plus ultramarine blue for darker areas. :)
So happy to hear from you! Love this post. Thank you!
Thank you Maryann! :)
What are your tips when using a blue and yellow for sky scenes for not getting a green tinge somewhere?
Hi, I saw your comment and someone somewhere said use raw sienna instead. It does work better.
I usually fade both colors with water so that they don’t really meet. It often works surprisingly well for these type of skies since they have a light band in that area anyway. And as Judy mentioned, some pigments create less of a green tinge.
Great to hear from you. I’ve been using this odd color blue by Holbein “verditer blue” makes great snow shadows on snow and sky by playing around with it and water. Also indanthrene blue by Windsor Newton.
That Holbein blue sounds like in interesting light blue, I will take a look at it – thanks for sharing. I too love these light colors for snow shadows, cobalt purple also works well for that.
Hi Julia,
Praying you are feeling better. Your sky and cloud painting class that I took several years ago, was what inspired me to improve my own. I recently took a watercolor workshop and made several wet on wet sky paintings. It was therapeutic and the effect looked just like a cloudy sky. I’m still working on clouds, but your post here already looks helpful, thank you for sharing
Thank you Jenny. Yes wet on wet painting can be very relaxing, and it’s a nice bonus if you end up getting a painting that actually looks like a cloudy sky!
Hi Julia
Thank you for sharing, allways interesting to see what you are on to!
I love combining cobalt blue and light red from w&n (pr102) for a soft sky and ultramarine blue and quinacridone burnt scarlet from daniel smith (pr206) for a more dramatic sky. Yellow ochre or a light kind of raw umber, like w&n, makes nice warmth without creating green with the blues.
Kind regards
These are great combinations, thank you for sharing Kit. Will have to add my raw umber back into the mix, it’s a wonderful pigment for getting softer effects.
So good to hear from you again. I so much appreciate your generous spirit.
I’ve been re-doing your botanical sketching class.
I have an odd question (forgive me; I used to be a philosophy teacher, so odd inquiries come up for me). When you are taking advantage of how a medium like watercolor behaves, for example, using wet-on-wet to paint a sky, how do you balance the benefits of intention and accident?
Another way of putting it: when you have a happy accident, do you still feel, *I* painted that? I think about this a lot as a beginner, because I am still working so hard on seeing accurately, capturing forms and angles, observing negative space, all in service of reproducing accurately what is in front of me. I can paint a convincing sky; but I can’t paint the sky I actually am seeing. How much would you care about that for yourself?
That is such an interesting question Rebecca. I think this is part of the creative process – letting things happen and knowing where you can “make use” of those accidental brush strokes, and which areas need a bit more precision. When I’m learning a new technique, I often have these moments of “this looks nice, but it’s not what I was going for”. That’s the explorative and technical part of it, over time you learn how to paint certain elements or effects. But yes I still feel that I created it and try to take internal (or literal) notes so that I can get the same effect again if I need it. With watercolor, especially wet-on-wet the pigment sometimes just settles in a weird way (or an unexpected beautiful way), no matter how well you know the medium.
I think with landscape sketching you have a lot more freedom to change individual elements, in comparison to botanical sketching, which usually is very realistic. I usually don’t aim for accurate skies, I try to focus on the overall atmosphere.
I hope this makes sense, it’s still a bit early. It’s a very intriguing topic and I will definitely think about it more!
I can’t remember how I found you and today I received your newsletter for the first time. I loved it! Thank you. Feel better.
PS: due to a happy accident, I made my favorite painting last night! :)
Thank you Karen, I really appreciate it! :) I hope you will enjoy my blog posts. And on to many new favorite paintings!
Julia,
Thank you for the new ideas and color combinations for skies. It’s always so good to hear about your explorations.
Thank you Judy, good to hear you enjoy my color explorations – I’m planning to do a few more of these.
Thank you for all your suggestions. They help those of us who are at the start of our journey. Please keep them coming.
You’re welcome Behzad, I’m happy to hear these kind of posts are helpful!
Thanks for sharing these helpful combinations! I’ve been doing watercolor for quite a while now, but I’ve always been scared of skies. Having a few combinations to achieve different results definitely helps.
You’re welcome Melissa! I can understand that painting skies seems daunting, it really helps me when I think of the sky as something that has a lot of moving parts anyway, and it’s not as crucial to paint it in a certain way, but you can be flexible with it. If that makes sense.
Yeah, that totally makes sense. :)
Thank you, Julia, for such inspiring posts! I learn so much just by looking at your work. What is your favorite brush? Do you use a pointed wash the most? What size? Do you like to use a flat brush?
Thank you!
Hi Audrey, thank you – that is a great way to learn! I really like synthetic round brushes, the kind of tip depends on what I want to paint. More pointy tip for thin lines and details, rounder tip for landscapes. I have flat brushes but rarely use them. For many years I’ve used inexpensive brushes from my local store since you have to replace synthetics anyway after a while when they lose shape, right now I like the Raphael Softaqua line, they have round and mop brushes that are great. I’m really warming up to mop brushes lately. I will have to write a post about brushes I think!
Thank you! We don’t have to spend a fortune on a brush, do we? Your answer makes me feel better. I’ve never heard of the brush line you’re using and I like what I see online. I may give them a try! There is much to be said for a cheaper line of brushes, ones more affordable to folks like me!
ooo interesting. Would love to see how you create sunsets.