Summer Sky in Pastel on Illustration Board
The subject matter of this painting is the sky. The long narrow format emphasizes the sky. The foreground is kept in the bottom fourth of the painting.
Standard procedure for pastel paintings is to start on a mid-value background, put in your darkest darks, then your lightest lights which gives all three values.
This painting was done on an illustration board called Midnight Blue which provides the darkest darks of the painting, and sets a dramatic mood.
Compositionally speaking, the long narrow format and the Midnight Blue background do most of the “work.” The clouds themselves and the foreground flora set the “place.” The diagonal of the clouds takes one’s eye from the upper left toward the horizon, which then picks up the foreground. Notice on the horizon line is the very lightest light of the painting silhouetting the mountains and giving depth. The tallest saguaro on the left leads the eye back up to the sky, creating a circular motion that allows the viewer to take in the whole painting.
Doing clouds in any medium can be fun because they can take any number of shapes, forms, or directions and still look legitimate.