How to Paint Clouds in Procreate

1. Introduction: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another one of my classes. In this one, I'm going to be sharing everything I know about painting clouds. Clouds can be a great way to add a simple background to your illustrations, or they can be a way to add a lot of detail and personality to a painting of landscape. My name's Chrissy and I'm an artist and illustrator. I love painting scenery and backgrounds and believe they don't have to be intimidating to make. I hope to pass on some techniques I've learned along the way that would have been great to know sooner in my own art journey. This class will be most suited to intermediate artists with a basic understanding of a digital art software like Procreate. Although beginners and traditional artists will still benefit from the lessons too. I'll be sharing some of the best procreate brushes for painting skies and we'll be using some of its features that you might not have tried yourself yet. When you finish this class, you'll have a finished painting of a sky full of clouds and the confidence to try painting them in your own unique pieces. Now, let's get started. 2. Class Project: When you've finished your project for this class, you'll have a finished painting of a cloudy sky. This is so you can come away from class with a chance to practice what you've learned. To achieve this, you'll be completing the following steps. Paint a high altitude Cloud. A medium altitude cloud and paint a low altitude cloud. Then finally, you'll pick your favorite time of day and paint a sky flow cloud spaced on it. I'll prompt you at the end of each lesson that has a class project aspect, so don't worry about getting started until you're feeling ready to. If you'd like a full summary of the project at any point, it'll be listed in the class project tab under the video. As always, I'll also include a link to a Pintrest board full of reference images. Before starting the main lessons, it'll be helpful to have procreate or whatever software you're using open and ready to go. When you comfy and ready. Let's begin. 3. High Clouds: To simplify things, we're going to categorize clouds into three types based on the height where they're found, high clouds, mid clouds, and low clouds. When looking up at the sky, you'll often see a mix of all these different types, so we're going to start from the top and work our way down. This won't necessarily cover every single type of cloud there is as a lot of them look quite similar, but it'll give you a great starting point, even if it's just to know what to search for when you want to find a reference image. These are really common clouds that look like wispy tufts of hair. During the day, they're often whider than any other type of clod, and when it gets darker, they can take on the color of the sunset. I. These clouds are made up of patches of cloudlets. They normally have soft shading and shadows and they can appear as white or gray. Something to take note of from seeing examples of these clouds is that generally, the higher cloud is in the atmosphere, the less detailed and shaded it will look. It will also be more translucent and sunlight will pass through it easily. Let's have a look now at how to paint these cloud types. Starting off of the series clouds, I find the wet acrylic brush to be the most useful for this type. Before we get started, let's add in a nice blue gradient on our background. To make this procreate, drop in a dark blue color. Then pick a lighter color and add it to the lower half of your canvas with a large soft brush. To blur, we're going to select the adjustments menu and Gossiu blur. Make sure to select layer instead of pencil. Drag your finger horizontally on your screen until you have a blend that you like. Okay, we can begin by using a large brush size to lightly sketch in the overall shape of the cloud. When doing this, I found it easier to brush in the direction of the shy curves that the wind seems to be pushing it in. Here's an example of some arrows to show what I mean. I use white as my color for this. When you're happy with the rough shape, switch to an eraser, decrease the size, and use it to shape it even more while still following the curves. I switch between the brush and eraser a few times while decreasing the brush size a little bit more every time. Keep going until you're happy with the level of detail. Sometimes it can be hard to know when to stop, so I keep quite med out for all of this. There comes a point eventually when tiny details don't add anything noticeable to a painting overall. I need to remind myself of this sometimes because I find detailing way too fun and can find it to stop. When you're satisfied with the shape, decrease the opacity of the layer to 50% and create a new layer on top of it. Now you can follow a similar process with the bright parts of the cloud. Start with our big brush, then decrease the size, era, and repeat to we're happy. As a final step, we can add a tiny bit of gossim blur again to help the clouds look more whispy. For this, I only add 1% to keep it subtle. Okay, let's try out some cumulus clouds now. For these, I like using a rainforest brush. Set up your blue gradient again for the background. Start it off similarly to the Cirrus clouds but with this new brush instead. So we're sketching out the rough shape of the clouds, then shaping it by painting and erasing with smaller brushes. We're also going to decrease the opacity of this layer to 50% and create a new one on top. With a smallish brush on the new layer, we're going to and tap in the cloudlets. I find that it's helpful to make little tiny swirling motions as we tap the brush to create randomness to the shapes. Next, we can move down to a tinier brush to tap in the smaller clouds until we're happy. I also like to use a smaller racer of the same type of brush to detail as well. Since there's more detail to this type of cloud, it takes a bit longer to paint than the other cloud types. But I think the result is pretty fun. Practice painting these clouds t you're comfortable, and then go ahead and move on to the next lesson where we'll be talking about the clouds you find at a medium height. If at any point you feel a bit stuck, leave me a comment, and I'll help you out where I can. For your class project, pick your favorite out of these two clouds and make a quick painting study of it. 4. Medium Clouds: In the last lesson, we talked about the higher clouds, so let's move on to mid height clouds. These are another type of cloud made up of lots of little cloudlets These are visually different from the ceralcumulus clouds because they have more noticeable shading. These are fluffy gray or blue clouds that spread over a very large area. These are a thicker version of the previous tal stratus clouds. They're often dark and gray and featureless. They block out sunlight and can produce rain. Let's have a look now at painting these ones. Attalcumulus clouds are quite similar to paint as the serial cumulus clouds from the last lesson, we're going to take the painting from that video and work on top of it with the rainforest brush again. If you're creating these clouds from scratch, follow the method for those clouds from the previous video first. Now we're going to select a bluey gray shade and add some shadows and shading. Keep in mind the direction the light is coming from and add these to the opposite sides of the cloudlets. Don't worry about adding shadows to every single cloudlet as some of still be all white. It saves time and makes things look a little bit more realistic. Generally, I add my shadows to the whiter bright clouds as they look more opaque and three D than the thinner wispy clouds. So they'll cast more shadows. As before, we can also go in with an e raser to help us with shaping things more nicely. You can also make little adjustments by lowering the opacity of the layer to see if you prefer how that looks. In this case, I lowered mine to 90%. If you want, you can also use a soft brush to lightly erase the lower shadows that are in the brighter part of the sky. Okay. Time for altostratus clouds. As these are relatively featureless, it's great news for us as it makes them quick to paint. We're going to be trying out a new brush for these ones called wet sponge. If your blue gradient made, create a new layer and select white as your color. Now we're going to make the wet sponge brush as large as we can, and then lightly swirl our brush around the canvas and one stroke. If you want to make it lighter, lift your brush, then swirl again on top of that. It can be helpful to decrease the brush size a little too. That's it. Nice and simple. Nimble stratus clouds are very like the to stratus clouds. To make those, we're going to draw on top of what we made for them. Select a medium blue gray and decrease your brush size a. Still with a wet sponge, swirl your brush over the clouds on a new layer while keeping a little bit of the original white visible for shading and depth. Oh. Switch to an eraser to pick more of the white back out, and that's it. When you feel ready, go ahead and move on to the next lesson where we'll cover the final types of clouds. For the class project part of this lesson, pick your favorite cloud type again from this video and paint a study of it. 5. Low Clouds: Now that we've gone over the top two layers of clouds, let's look at the lower ones. These are really common fluffy clouds. They're detached and individual with bright white tops and relatively dark bases. The furer away they are, the more they blend into the sky color. These are similar to cumulus clouds, but they're a lot more condensed and attached together. They're some of the most common clouds you'll see, and they can be anywhere from bright white to dark gray. They've got well defined flat bases with some parts darker than others. This cloud type is pretty simple. It's just a features foggy blanket of white or gray. Finally, we've got my personal favorite type of cloud. These are really tall clouds that get wider towards the top. Their base is flat and dark and they have a lot of texture. These clouds are associated with extreme weather and can produce thunder lightning and hail. Now that we've talked about all these cloud types, let's paint these final ones. For cumulus clouds, since they're thicker and closer to us in the sky, it's best to think of these clouds like three D shapes. They're normally flat and dark on the bottom, so it's helpful to think of their basic shape like half a sphere with flat bit being the bit in shadow. Here's a few drawn at different angles to give an idea of what I mean. If you're looking at it from far away, you're going to see at the base, but if it's nearly over your head, you're going to see more of it. Start with the wet sponge brush and white to swirl in the shape while keeping a flat base in mind. Lift and swirl your brush again to add the wider parts where the sun is hitting it. Try to keep it looking nice and soft. If you want to have more crisp edges, you can go in with small eraser to refine them. Now, we can create a new layer and set it to clipping mask over our white layer with a blue gray color in the lower part of the cloud. Now you can get a medium sized eraser to shake this until you like it. If you want it to look less dramatic, you can decrease the opacity of this new layer until you like the look. Okay. Let's try out Stradlecmulus clouds now. These are similar to cumulus clouds but more pumped and detailed, so we're going to start with the same method of adding in the white silhouettes. This time, though, we're going to make them look more lumpy than soft. We're also going to create them in two or three layers to help us with making them detailed. For the first layer, we're going to make the lower layer of the clouds using the wet sponge brush. Keep in mind if you want the sunlight to be coming from the left, right, or above. Let's create a new layer and repeat this. If it helps, you can turn off the previous layer so you can see where you're adding the new clouds. Do this as many times as you like until you like the result. If you want any inspiration for the shapes of the clouds, looking at lots of reference images is really helpful. To each of these, we're going to add a clipping there and add shadows. Like me, you might find it easier to start with the shading on the top clouds. When you shade the bottom clouds, keep in mind the shadows the top ones can cast on them. If you want to soften up some edges, you can use a large soft brush. Finally, if you want to add more detail, you can switch to a rainforest brush to add in some clouds too. This is a cloud type that you can really experiment with and have fun with. So do what makes you happy. Okay, let's jump into stratus clouds now. Compared to the stratocumulus ones, these are super quick and easy. We're just going to take a wet sponge brush and cover the sky in a light gray that gets darker towards the bottom. If you want, you can change the color of your brush to a darker shade to make this a stronger. Finally, it's time for cumulon mbus clouds. These are a really good one to finish with as we can practice all the techniques we've used so far on them. For this one, I'm going to start with a wet sponge brush in white, making sure to give it the distinctive wider part at the top. I'm going to shape it until I'm ready to add a little bit of shading. With the bluish gray, I'm going to add in some shadows. I want my light to be coming from the left in this, so I'll place the shadows on the right. These clouds have a real mix of hard and soft edges, so to add more hard edges. I'm going to use the rainforest brush. I'm going to add in more light areas and a few little cloudlets. A. Feel free to add as much as you like to your version and get really creative. If you like, you can also go into the adjustments menu to play a round of the curves. Personally, I like to pull the left side down and the right side up like this. Procreate doesn't currently have the option to adjust contrasts like photoshop, so this is the next thing. If you've made it this far, well done because you've just made it through all the clouds, I'm going to be covering in this class. If you're following along with the class project, now's the time to pick your favorite from this video to paint a study of. In the next video, we're going to be covering some of the more fun stuff. So if you want to paint vibrant sunsets and things like that, then go ahead and move on to the next lesson. 6. Times of Day: So far, we've been looking at how clouds look in normal daylight against a blue sky. But of course, the sky can be really colorful instead of just white and blue shades. Here's some examples of the mixes of colors you can get in the sky. A super simple version of what's happening is to do with particles in the air. The shorter wavelengths of light, such as blues and purples, bounce more easily off these particles in directions away from your eyes. During the afternoon, when the sun is high in the sky, the light doesn't have to pass through as many particles. So overall, the sky looks blue since less of the blue wave lengths are lost. When the sun's low in the sky and setting, the light has more of the atmosphere that pass through, so more of the blue light is lost and the sky looks more orange as a result. Now that we've outlined what's causing this, let's see what we can do the paint it. The first thing we're always going to start with is the sky gradient. For the blue skies, we just use two colors, but for sunsets, you can use more if you like. The next, we're going to want to pick our light color for the cloud. As the sunlight is directly hitting this side, it's going to take on the color of that light source. In this example, it's going to be a light yellow. I color pick the lightest color in the sky gradient and adjust it to get this. The shadow side color is going to be more affected by the ambient color of the sky around it, so here it will be tinged with blue. This time, I color picked the darkest color in my sky gradient to adjust. Now that you have your main colors down, add detail by color picking them off your canvas. I used a rainforest brush and soft brush for this, and here's what I ended up with. Let's look at another type of sky color now. In this example, we're going to try a more dramatic sky. The light color is going to be a shade of more saturated orange. Before we just lightened the color we got from the sky gradient, but by adding more saturation, it looks more dynamic. The shadow side is going to be a slightly darker purple as it's taking you on the color of a little bit of the sunlight and more of the sky color. After detailing this one, here's how it turned out. For one final example, we'll quickly look at one more sky two. So after adding our gradient, we'll use a pink for the light and a purply blue for the shadows. A A Here's the finished result of this one. There's countless possibilities for sky and cloud colors. So if you're in doubt, find a reference image that you like and copy the colors from it. Great. That's all the main points covered in this class. If there's any questions you still have left, let me know in the discussions tab under the video. Hopefully, you're now feeling more confident in this topic. The one simple thing we have to remember is that the cloud colors are affected by the environment around them. In the next lesson is a Little bonus, we're going to talk about some fun extra details you can add to your paintings to give them more personality. I. 7. Extra Details: Before we put everything we've learned together, let's talk a little bit about some extra details. We could add to our skies to spice things up. Sometimes the sky can look fine to you without anything extra, but sometimes it might just feel like something is missing. There's so many possibilities, but here's a few little ones to help spark an idea for you. For an easy moon, use the round brush to add a white circle. Tap and hold the eraser and use it to cut out the center to make a crescent. You can leave it like this or decrease the opacity of the layer to blend it in with that, M. There's a trick you can use to make stars really quickly. Pick a brush you like and swipe left on it to have the option to duplicate it. Now, tap on it and drag spacing all the way to the right. Then drag Jitter all the way to the right too. For mine, I use the mon al brush. Now you can scribble in the sky full of stars really quickly. For more depth, use a large soft brush to gently erase to make the edges fainter. S. To make condensation trails from a plane, use a wet sponge brush. Draw where you want the line to begin to where you want it to end and hold it for a second. Procreate will straighten this for you. Decrease the opacity of this, and then you can use it as a guide to add details on new layer. As these trails get further away from the plane, they spread out more and become more fluffy and cloud like. The Odion brush is a great brush to use for this, although it can be a little bit tricky. One thing to make sure before you start is that both the colors in your color selection are set to the one you want as it's affected by both. It's also very affected by the pressure and angle you use. I find a light pressure works the best for me. Draw a sweeping line in the shape you want. Next, use the blending tools, set to your soft brush, and smudge out the harsh lines at the edges. Take the same blending brush and flick it upwards across your shape until you like how it looks. Oh. Oh. As a finishing touch to mine, I also added in some extra glow with a big soft brush. Sometimes it can be nice to add something into the foreground of a sunset painting. This will be in shadow, but it won't be pure black as it's going to take on the colors of the sky a little bit. Here I'm going to use a warm brown color. The flat brush can be great for this to quickly brock into shapes, I'm going to add some hills, a tree, and a fence to this one. In the next two lessons, I'm going to share a full painting demonstration of how to use all these techniques to make a sky painting. 8. Demonstration: Afternoon: We should have an understanding now from the previous lessons of what goes into painting clouds. So it's time to put it all together. In this example, I'm going to show you how I paint a blue afternoon sky. When I'm doing a full painting like this, I like to start in the foreground or with the low clouds and work my way up. This saves you from spending time painting a lot of details in the background just to have them covered up. I start off with a wet sponge brush to add in some fluffy clouds. Sometimes I'll flip the layers on and off to better see where I'm adding my details. Next, I add in some ser cumulus cloudlets with the rainforest brush. I also do a bit of erasing to shape things I want. In another layer, I add some blue gray shading and adjust the opacity to blend it in. Occasionally, I'll also go into the adjustments menu to play around with the Huan saturation sliders. For the rest of the cloud detailing, I'll just color pick what's there on the canvas and drop in some extra details wherever I feel like it needs it. For some extra interest, I decided to go in and add a grassy field in the foreground. I used a mixture of a flat brush, a Nico roll brush, and the dry ink brush. I used the flat brush for blocking in the main shapes, the Nico roll for adding textures and shadows and the dry ink for fine details like grass strands. To make the colors work against the sky, pick the green on your color wheel that's a bit closer to the blue shades and don't make it too saturated. It's going to be affected by the blue light of the sky, so this will make it look a little bit more realistic. You can see I was quite indecisive about what else to add. So I just went for my favorite fallback. I'm stuck, which is just a fence. A. M. 9. Demonstration: Sunset: We're nearly at the end. Now, I hope you've learned some fun new things. In this last lesson, I'll demonstrate one way that I paint a sunset. For the sky color in this, I'm going to place a yellow at the bottom that fades up into a blue. Remember to use gaussian blur to get a nice smooth transition. This time, I'm going to start the clouds with their shadow color. As there's blues in the sky and a warm orange light source, they're going to be a dark shade of purple. I'm using the rainforest brush for most of this. Then I'm going to add in a saturated orange color where the light is hitting the clouds. The light colors and sunsets are harsher than the light in normal daylight, so this is good to keep in mind when you're picking colors. For more depth, I go in with a wet acrylic brush to add some cerus clouds. These are done with the same methods from the earlier tutorial, but with a slightly yellower shade of white. From here, I'm mostly just color picking the colors that are already there and adding in the finer detos. You can also see that I'm adjusting the human saturation sliders quite often. I think in this case, it's totally fine to be a bit in decisive because it can lead to you accidentally finding a cool color scheme, happy accidents. Oh. I also decided that I wanted to add a little scene under the sky, so I went in with a very dark flat brush to add some hills in the distance. I copied the cloud layer and flipped at 180 degrees to act as a glassy reflection in the lake. Oh. With a large soft brush, I added some lighting with a light orange on a separate overlay layer. Then to finish it off, I went around the piece with a soft brush and a dry ink brush to add in the final finishing touches. A Oh. 10. Closing Thoughts: Well done, if you've made it here to the end. Here's a little recap of the main points. The sky is a gradient of color that gets lighter towards the horizon. The higher a cloud is in the sky, the less detail it has. Clouds take on the color from their light source. Shadows take their color from the dark sky color. If you followed along with the class project, please feel welcome to share it below. It'll be great to see what you've created. If you'd also like to be notified of my future classes, you can follow me here on Sco share or in the following places. All right. That's us. Thanks for taking my class. I hope you had a lot of fun. If you enjoyed this class, I also currently have two others released about drawing birds, which you can check out. You'll find them linked down below. Bye for now, everyone.