In this lesson, the technique of drawing the sky and clouds with a pencil will be considered, at the very end there will be a video with the same technique for a better understanding of how and what.
Look at the three images below. First image. It has a very sharp transition between heaven, earth and barn. There is just space left here.
This is the second image. It is much better as the sky tone is added.
The third image includes the rendered sky and clouds. The clouds add depth to the scene.
Clouds are different cirrus, stratus, cumulus, transitional between these clouds, rain, etc.
This is a very specific list of materials that I use. Of course, you may have other tools. Experiment to find own style drawing. Pencils F (pencil softness between HB and B) and 2H with a 0.5 mm mechanical rod, a piece of suede (material), Tortillon (pencil for shading) - small (you can just roll the paper so that there is a pointed tip), Blu-Tack ( nag), small ruler, Strathmore 300 Series Bristol Board paper, makeup brushes.
Step 1. Do hatching to create a tone. I use the free position of the hand, only the hand works. I have hatched in three layers with an F pencil, 1 layer horizontally, the other two diagonally.
Step 2. Now we rub the painted tone with a rag (suede) wrapped around the finger. Do this several times to achieve a smooth tone. See to rub everything around the edges, as well as buildings, trees and the horizon.
Avoid touching the surface of the paper with your fingers. It is during mixing that fingerprints appear. If they appear, it is very difficult to fix (unless they ended up in a cloud formation), and many times you just have to start over! I will add 2 more layers of hatching with a 2H pencil and blend again. This creates a nice smooth surface. Using a ruler and eraser, make the edges on the sides even.
Step 3. Now with an eraser create clouds. For light thin lines in the clouds, I use a nag and just drag it across the entire surface.
Step 4 Using the 2H pencil create a dark transition next to the white tops of the clouds. Use a pencil to blend in these areas. Apply new tones, stroke, blend, erase to achieve the appearance of clouds on paper. To soften the edges of the clouds, use a nag. Remember that if the focus of your drawing is not clouds, they should not compete with the rest of the landscape. I usually use beams of light and hints of clouds in most of my landscapes. I usually spend 5-8 hours just painting the sky and clouds. Patience is key in creating good skies.
Here is an example of the evening sky.
Now you can see how to draw the sky and clouds in the video from another author.
In this lesson, I will show you how to draw the sky and clouds with a pencil step by step. It is quite simple and now you will see it. We will draw with feathering and an eraser. After practicing a few times, I am sure that you can draw the sky and clouds in a few minutes.
How to draw sky and clouds
Lesson how to draw the sky I saw it on one of the Western sites and decided to make a similar lesson on my blog. For the lesson I drew a small landscape with a simple pencil. You can also draw such a landscape, or try to draw clouds first on clean slate. As I said, we will draw with a feather and an eraser.
We start to do shading. soft pencil"6B" gently stroke, and then shade the strokes. The main thing is not to put pressure on the pencil, and then the strokes will not be visible. They will easily fall on paper, and they can also be easily shaded. At this stage, in the lesson on how to draw the sky, all attention should be paid to shading.
Make sure that the shading is even. To do this, take your time and look at the tone of the picture.
For shading, you can use cotton swab, cotton wool or a piece of white clean paper.
Thus, I got a uniform tone of the picture.
Further in the lesson how to draw the sky, with the help of an eraser we will draw clouds. In this case, you can even say - we will "wipe" the clouds. The main thing is not to mindlessly rub, but to carefully display each cloud. I use a nag eraser, which I think is great for drawings like this.
Make sure that neither the clouds nor the landscape "fall out" of the picture. It is very important that the drawing is one whole. Do not make the clouds very white - this is wrong. Only in some places, illuminated by the sun, they can be white, but in the rest they have a shadow.
If you erased too much with an eraser, then you can always correct it with a simple pencil. Moreover, then you still need to trim the clouds and their edges so that there are no sharp transitions. You can level them hard pencils markings "H" or "2H" for greater airiness.
Look at the drawing at a distance of one or two meters, and you will see whether something falls out of the drawing or not. If the drawing doesn't work, try again. Be patient - without it, drawing is simply nowhere.
There is an opinion that there are two large bodies of water on our planet: this is the ocean under your feet and the ocean above your heads. The second once collapsed to the ground back in the time of Noah with his ark, which contained only a couple of creatures, and flooded everything. Well, then he calmed down and calmly hangs somewhere in the atmosphere. This lesson will show you how to draw the sky with a pencil. Yes, the task is difficult, but let's see what we can do. (you can click on the picture to see it) big size, if you want to draw in more detail) The sky is a predominantly blue or black formation, the place where gods, stars and flying birds live. Serves for movement in space of flying objects. There is no clear definition of where the sky begins or ends, but if you rise a few meters above it, you will find yourself in a rather tearful melodrama. This definition appeared with the release documentary film about a space called Three meters above the sky. Until now, science believed that after the sky begins an airless space called space. No matter how. If you dig deeper, it turns out that crowds must live in heaven dead people led by the Almighty. But the pilots and astronauts never confirmed this. Also in the blue ocean, very non-blue clouds are formed, which carry a lot of moisture, electricity and loud bass, and thanks to meteorological stations they always come suddenly. What else do I know about the sky:
- You can point your finger at the sky. So they say when a person tries to guess a thing, for example, a pin code from a found phone, or a ticket number for an exam;
- There are holes in it - ozone holes. Falls into them sunlight with such speed that, falling on a person’s head, it can kill him, or fry him, making a good tan;
- In fact, the sky has no color. It's about building human eyes, which inadequately perceive color. I wonder what else is wrong with him;
- For a long time in ancient times, people feared that, sooner or later, the sky would fall on their heads and strangle them. And this is understandable, because science claims that its weight is approximately 5,300,000,000,000,000 tons;
Of course, it is not going to fall (at least for now). But it will serve as a good raw material for our creativity. And so let's get down to business.
How to draw the sky with a pencil step by step
Step one. We draw several circles that will turn into clouds. 
Step two. Making the clouds more wavy and fluffy. 
Step three. Outline the drawing with a thicker line. 
Step four. Let's draw some ground under the sky and shade the clouds. 
Well, this is how it happened. You can color with colored pencils or paints. Do you want drawing lessons for other landscapes? Here's what I recommend trying.
In this lesson, I will try to show you how to draw a sky with a small number of clouds quite quickly and quite simply.
For painting, I used a simple round soft brush, and for the lesson I used a brush from the Adonihs package - Cloud Brush 2
Materials for the lesson:
A little advice: Try not to use the cloud brush too hard and often. Otherwise, your drawing will not look very believable. This brush is very good to use for creating a general background and a barely noticeable haze. Detailing and drawing the clouds themselves, if possible, with a soft brush with varying degrees of pressure and opacity.
(click on image to enlarge)
First, I filled the canvas with a gradient fill. I took the dark blue and light blue colors shown in the picture below. Since we are trying to draw the sky, which we look at from the bottom up, the lower part of the canvas will be farther from us, which means lighter and paler. Keep this in mind while drawing and try to maintain this ratio throughout the work.
Now that we have done the most important thing, let's try to make a sketch. You can, of course, create on the fly, but I prefer to arrange the composition somehow before starting to draw. I wanted to display light feather clouds from below, place the sun on the right, and under it a small cloud. Well, the hero of the picture will be a trail from a flying plane. Once you've sketched, it's best to keep it on the topmost layer and turn it back on periodically to compare with what you're getting. True, not infrequently, the composition may change in the course of drawing. But it's not scary. The main thing is that this does not happen by accident and then you do not have to fix everything.
My main brush for painting clouds is soft round brush(Soft Round Brush). I usually draw on a large canvas (this drawing was made in the size of 2400*3200 pixels). But the whole time I was painting, it was reduced to 25%.
I find it comfortable to paint with a very large range of brush radii. Yes, and for the aircraft and small parts, you will need an increase, otherwise accuracy may not work.
So soft round tassel with a very large diameter, I highlight the surface where the sun and cloud will be. What does it mean to illuminate? I just paint on top of the places I need with low opacity and pressure (approximately 20-30%) - where the sun, cloud, feather clouds will be. That is, chaotically, but deliberately I fill in more light color canvas. In order for the work not to be completely monotonous, I add the same Blue colour, but slightly different from those already available. You can choose any color you like. Just remember that it should also be bluish-yellow.
Advice: Don't skip this step. Due to laziness and the desire to quickly start drawing clouds, many people skip this seemingly insignificant step. But it is he who forms the beginning of the volume of the sky. If this is not done, then your sky will look flat, and the clouds will look sharp and cardboard.
Still the same brush, but already with a small diameter, I outline the first bands of clouds in the distance. I paint with a slight opacity (20-30%) sometimes with straight lines, sometimes with hatching or even spirals. Try different variants and leave the ones that seem more suitable to you. In fact, there is nothing complicated here. The main thing to remember is that you need to draw with different diameters and, as it were, layer by layer, gently pass over the top.
Advice: Try not to immediately increase the clouds to white. Do it gradually. Remember that the lines should not be solid and continuous, and most importantly, they should not be dense and thick. That's why we paint with soft tassel and at low opacity. Only by the end you need to increase the opacity and carefully detail with thin stripes or spirals.
I continue to add stripes of clouds at the bottom of the drawing and sketched out the base for the clouds, which I plan to place to the right of the plane. Please note that I did all this with a low opacity and even for light detailing I used a range of approximately 40-50%.
Now I have taken brush from the set for painting clouds and with a very low opacity (20-30%) and walked along the upper right part of the picture, gradually mixing the colors, taking with an eyedropper those that turned out in the picture. Thus, we get a smooth transition. There is not much to explain here. This step is identical immediately to the first step after filling the gradient. The only difference is the brush.
I did not like how I positioned the cloud on the left and using the filter Liquify I slightly modified it and pulled it to the left. In general, this tool is quite useful for fixing what you don't like. The main thing here is not to overdo it.
Advice: Save more. Especially if you are just a beginner artist, then save more files so that you can roll back. If possible, paint on a small number of layers, merging them together along the way. Big number layers are not a crime, but they eat a lot of memory from your computer. Well, a small number of layers gradually kills the fear of corrections.
Now that we've tweaked the image a bit, I'm back to round soft tassel. I increase the opacity to 50-70% and paint with a very small diameter. What am I doing? That's right - I detail the clouds a little. The main thing to remember here is that the strokes should be short, sometimes even just dotted squiggles, spirals, strokes. Do not draw long, unbroken lines, straight or curved. Do everything in small pieces. And if at the same time you still have pen pressure working well enough, then you will see how much difference there will be between a solid squiggle and pieces. So, I detailed the clouds on the left a little and darkened the clouds on the right a little, as I began to miss the clear sky.
After carefully studying my drawing, I decided to abandon the arcuate cloud on the left and painted over it with a large soft brush with a low opacity, applying layer by layer. The most important thing here is not to be afraid to abandon the idea and come up with something new. There is nothing wrong with redrawing. But usually this understanding just comes with time. Now, with a cloud brush, with low opacity and a small diameter, I sketched in the cloud on the left and intensified the cloud on the upper right, creating noticeable transitions that can be mistaken for soft cloud transitions.
Advice: If you just draw a line with a cloud brush, you will get just a spot with torn edges. In order to get the volume, again, you need to make small strokes with this brush. By overlaying them in random order and have an exclusively visual look, whether you like it or not.
All this time I paint exclusively in white or, taking the color directly from the drawing with an eyedropper, when I made the general mass for the spot on the right, where the sun will be. But for the cloud, I also took dark blue color and added it below and a little bit between the white. Since light falls on the cloud from above, a small shadow will be from below. It is almost imperceptible, but gives a sense of volume.
Armed again (and again, again) soft tassel With the opacity already high (about 70%), I added detail to the clouds on the left, giving them a little more volume. And again, I do this in very smooth and short strokes. Sometimes I just point.
Then I took a light yellow color and added it to the top right corner (soft round brush with low opacity (~30%) and large diameter) where I have the sun. Remember to keep the top left corner dark and clean. There you can add a little purple in order to enhance the depth.
Further actions are not much different from all the previous ones. I step up White color on feather clouds using small and large diameters with varying degrees of opacity. If I don't like a place, I don't erase it, but draw over it. brush with a larger diameter and then detail again. If you erase, you will get a gap, which then will be more difficult to fix than to paint over.
I clean the sky where there are no clouds, as it is a little dirty with a lighter color. I smooth the transitions from dark blue and down to light. All this is done elementarily with the same brush with a large diameter and low opacity.
The process is coming to an end. I again process all the clouds a little and reduce the saturation at the very bottom. It seemed to me that the clouds were superfluous there. They stuck to the bottom of the picture, removing the feeling of volume. I reduce the saturation very simply - with a brush with a large diameter and low opacity, I just paint over it. The main thing here is not to regret what you drew.
Advice: In such cases, try painting on a separate layer, and then play with its transparency settings, choosing the interval that seems most ideal to you. And when you are satisfied - merge the layers.
I filled the remaining space with two stripes from the plane using a cloud brush with different opacity and diameter.
1. First, with a thin round soft brush, I painted one stripe, then I duplicated it and, having turned a little as I needed with the transformation, placed it next to it.
2. By increasing the resolution, tassel for the clouds at 100% opacity, I went over the entire length of the stripes, gradually increasing the radius of the brush.
3. Switching to eraser, I lowered its opacity and set the eraser brush to the cloud brush and corrected the stripes that I have spread a little to the sides, since the cloud brush does not lay down in a straight line.
4. Still the same eraser, but with a larger diameter, I rubbed the tail a little, making it more transparent and dissolved in the sky.
5. Well, then I painted the plane itself with a couple of strokes. The plane is drawn in such a situation simply with a rigid round tassel in white. That is, we draw only glare from the sun. And that's all.
I slightly tighten the contrast automatically and see that this way I like the result more, although the difference came out and is not too noticeable. I add a filter Render->Lens Flare(Filter - Rendering - Highlights), setting the point with the "sun" in the upper right corner. I leave all values by default.
Advice: If this results in circles in the upper corner, go over the top with a brush to mask the result of the filter.
That, in fact, is all!
If you are not entirely clear how this work was drawn, you can download a PSD file with the original size of the work and with a large number of layers.
If you are going to draw nature, the van certainly cannot do without the image of the sky and its main feature- clouds. We will tell you how to draw clouds correctly and beautifully in this lesson.
Blue sky above
Blue sky with clouds on a sunny day - our the main objective, because such a sky has the greatest contrast. You can draw in nature, or you can take a photo, which is especially convenient for beginners, since you won’t have to be distracted by changes in the sky.
So, the desired part of the sky is selected, now let's carefully study it. Let's note all its features: which clouds, where and how the shadows are located, where are the brightest areas. Let's do the first one.
markup
We paint over the blue areas with a 2B pencil. We do not touch the light areas of the clouds, reserving the white color. We will only make a border in the place where they should be. At the same time, we designate feather clouds with light hatching (later we will erase it).
Light and shadow
Hard pencil (B) dark areas to add volume. Do neat shading down to the light areas. Having made hatching in the dark places of the clouds, we then soften them with an elastic band. When the drawings have been given the necessary volume, we clean up the places of the feather clouds with an elastic band.
Adding details
With the soft edge of the elastic we add smoothness to the details of the sky, we use the hard edge to create white lines, the main thing is that the graphite layer is not too thick. Our drawing has quite energetic hatching, which helps to give the necessary dynamics to the whole drawing. You can create smoother and more realistic picture, making finer shading using the B and 3B pencils on softer paper. Of course, here you will need a certain perseverance. don't be afraid to experiment, make different variations and use various materials when creating a drawing and your sky will be the way you want.
