5 tips to paint backlit clouds

Painting backlit clouds isn't extremely difficult, but there are a few things you should keep in mind. Here are five tips that will help you get great results. There is a rule in painting that says you should always keep the sun outside the picture frame. There's a certain logic to that. If you actually look straight into the sun, you will be blinded and you will see nothing at all. But even with the sun outside the frame, you can create the illusion that it is shining brightly. You do this by painting a color gradient from a very light to a very deep blue. You may not see the sun, but you feel its presence. In the lower part of the sky, I paint the color of what will later become vague clouds in the distance. the more the clouds will become overexposed by the bright light. More about that later, but for now it is wise to create a color gradient in your underpainting of the clouds. It will be helpful later on in the process. Edges are essential when painting clouds, even when they're backlit. A hard edge isolates your cloud from its environment. That's why I blur the line with my thumb to make the edge gradually blend into the rest of the cloud. If you then paint the silver lining, it's no longer isolated but part of the whole. Anyone who has ever taken a photo knows how sometimes a bright light source causes part of the image to be overexposed and therefore blurred. You can use this in your painting to enhance the suggestion of the intense light of the sun. That is why I paint a transparent layer on top of the clouds closest to the sun. Applying these transparent layers is very easy if you're working on a smooth surface like I do. On canvas it's a bit more difficult. I use a color shaper to do the sparkles on the water. Color shapers are most commonly used to draw in still wet paint, exposing the underlying color. I often use them to draw dune grasses, but they're also great for doing sparkles on the water. In a backlight situation, every tiny wave in the distance becomes a mirror that reflects the sunlight, creating these kind of sparkles. You can't see exactly where to paint your highlights until the rest of the tonal ratios are OK. Only then can you apply them in the right places and properly dosed. Be careful with your highlights. If you paint too much of them, the effect will be lost. The color I mainly use for my highlights is titanium white with a very small amount of vermilion red. A little medium, so that the paint has relief and therefore catches even more light.