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Once the elements that touch the sky are complete and surrounded
by color,
I can begin the sky itself. I did not have time to complete all this in
one sitting,
but worked for short periods over several days. Instead of worrying about
keeping
my colors wet on the canvas to work my edges, I simply worked the edges
into
the sky color in the immediate area.
At this point, although all the previous paint was dry,
I was able to work the sky
into the existing areas of flat sky color surrounding the other elements.
Since
I had already worked the edges of those elements wet into wet, I did not
need to
worry now about developing hard edges on those elements when painting wet
into dry. I simply needed to make sure that my fresh paint blended into
the existing
flat sky colors rather than butting up directly against the edges of the
figure or
other elements.
The sky was painted from the warmest area above the sailboat
outward to the
cooler areas. There is a slight purplish haze on the horizon of the ocean
at
the bottom, while above the colors move into muted reds, warm violets, and
then to cool blues. I used a relatively small brush - a #6 hogshair filbert
-
to paint the sky, blending back and forth between the colors and letting
the
visible brushwork create a sense of vibration in the sky.
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