Courses Beginner’s Guide to Drawing & Painting Clouds
Beginner’s Guide to Drawing & Painting Clouds
£72 £58
watercolour

Beginner’s Guide to Drawing & Painting Clouds

Beginner’s Guide to Drawing & Painting Clouds is a structured online masterclass thoughtfully designed for aspiring artists and beginners. Featuring high-definition video demonstration lessons, this course comes with clear English voiceovers and subtitles, making your learning experience seamless and accessible.

The curriculum follows an intuitive step-by-step progression, starting from foundational pencil sketching and simple perspective principles to help you grasp the three-dimensional volume of clouds. You will dive into a systematic breakdown of line work, composition, light and shadow placement, colour mixing, and essential water control.

As you move into watercolour painting, you will master the medium’s core techniques, including flat washes, colour blending, wet-on-wet, dry-on-dry, and negative space painting. Whether you are picking up a paintbrush for the very first time or seeking to enhance the atmospheric depth of your artwork, this course will empower you to capture the fleeting beauty of skies and clouds with total technical confidence.

~2h 35m 13 lessons beginner
What you will learn

By the end of this course

  • Simplify fluffy cloud contours in pencil and hatch them into three-dimensional form
  • Arrange clouds on a perspective grid so the sky reads with real foreground-to-horizon depth
  • Mix colour and control your water — flat washes, graded washes, wet-on-wet and dry-on-dry
  • Guard the whites with negative space painting and carry the atmosphere of a real sky
Syllabus

What is inside

01
Introduction to drawing clouds Free preview
Crystal has supplied the film; the description is still to come.
8m
02
Pencil cloud form & basic hatching
Simplify fluffy cloud contours in pencil, then hatch to set light, shadow and first volume.
13m
03
Marker perspective grid & spatial depth
Arrange clouds from foreground to horizon on a perspective grid, varying stroke weight for depth.
6m
04
Detailed graphite shading & soft edges
Understand the concepts of sketching and use deep shadows and subtle tonal gradations to transform flat outlines into three-dimensional cloud forms.
45m
05
Marker block-in & value distribution
Dual-tone markers block sky and cloud shadow fast, so composition is planned before paint.
14m
06
Perfect sky gradient & water control
Control the water-to-paint ratio for smooth, brushstroke-free sky gradients — no backruns.
3m
07
Cloud volume, light & layered shading
Warm sunset light against cool purple-grey shadow, built up in multiple washes.
7m
08
Reserved whites & flat-wash cloud studies
Two studies on one sheet: hard-edged whites left unpainted, cool flat washes laid around them.
8m
09
Soft-edged cumulus on a deep blue sky
Building a saturated blue behind billowing whites, keeping every edge soft.
14m
10
A dark cloud bank over a warm horizon
Cool storm greys above, warm ochre and orange below — two temperatures in one sky.
9m
11
Lifting & softening a single cloud
Working back into a damp wash with a clean brush to shape one cloud from the sky itself.
6m
12
Towering cumulus in layered greys
Stacked grey-violet washes against deep blue, with the sunlit faces reserved.
10m
13
A broken sky of scattered cloud
Many small forms at once — reserved whites, grey undersides, and blue holes between them.
7m
Who it is for

This course suits

Complete beginners

No drawing experience assumed — the first lesson starts at the shopping list.

Photo copiers

You can copy a reference but cannot invent a sky from nothing.

Flat-sky painters

Your clouds keep going flat, grey or muddy and you cannot see why.

Included

What comes with it

  • Supply list
  • Cloud reference photo pack
  • Printable value-scale card
  • Sky palette mixing chart