How to Paint Clouds in Acrylic with a Palette Knife
Learn how to paint clouds in acrylic with a palette knife. You can learn how to paint clouds in acrylic as a beginner painter. By painting better clouds you will be able to paint better landscape paintings. Painting clouds in acrylic with a palette knife allows you to paint some really nice texture. Keep reading to learn how to paint clouds in acrylic!
Learn How to Paint Clouds with a Palette Knife -for Beginners| Easy Step by Step Acrylic Painting- learn from artist Jackie Partridge. Fall in love with the abstract texture of Palette Knife Painting. This painting lesson is perfect for beginners with no experience using a palette knife before! Recommended age is 9 and up! This is an easy art technique and painting lesson to try --- learn a new simple acrylic painting technique to add to your skill development today!
New to palette knife painting? I recommend you watch this video first to learn more about palette knives BEFORE you begin.
Materials Needed to Paint Clouds in Acrylic:
-a palette knife
-container of water
-a rag
-a palette
-a canvas or canvas board
-flat one inch brush
-titanium white paint, mars black, cobalt and ultramarine blue, a bit of cadmium yellow paint
Step 1 -How to paint clouds in acrylic
Start by painting the background. You can start by painting ultramarine blue with a bit of mars black paint for the top third of the canvas. Then you can mix in some cobalt blue paint to blend the painting, with some cobalt blue and titanium white paint mixed together for the bottom third of the painting. Once you have the background painted with a one inch flat brush you can let the background dry completely.
Step 2 -add texture with the palette knife
Next, you can repeat the background but this time using a palette knife instead of a paint brush to add texture to the painting.
Step 3 - Paint the Clouds with a Palette Knife
Next you can begin to paint the clouds with a palette knife and titanium white paint. Spread the clouds out randomly so they don’t look perfectly positioned. You can mix in some mars black paint with the titanium white paint to create a grey for the shadows of the clouds at the bottom of your clouds. You can download my Free Mixing Grey and Green Resource here!
As you are painting the clouds in acrylic you can use different angles of the palette knife to create different texture and marks. You can use the tip to create smaller and finer cloud details and you can use the bottom edge of the palette knife to cover more area and to smooth out the paint or glop on some extra paint to add more texture and fluffiness to the clouds.
Step 4- add details to the clouds
You can feather the edges of the clouds by lightly smearing the white paint with your finger, you could also use a sponge or a paper towel/cloth rag. You want to have a variety of clouds like small ones, thin ones and fat ones to help the clouds look more realistic. If you want you can mix in some cadmium yellow with titanium white to add some highlights and variety of greys and colour to your clouds.
To watch how to paint clouds in acrylic with a palette knife- just click on the video below!
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