20160628

Cloud studies




All are about 6 x 8", oil on primed paper.  These are the view out my window, more or less.

Constable is not a favorite painter of mine, but he had a great work ethic and made a practice of painting cloud studies.  He called it "skying."  He said, "It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the keynote, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment...The sky is the source of light in Nature, and governs everything."  You can see one of his studies on the Google Art Project here.  Such studies are of immense benefit as exercises in concentration and rapid depiction, because clouds do not stand still--especially here!