Painting a Thunderhead

Over the two hour period of this painting, the scene rapidly changed from minute to minute. As soon as I had the shapes established, I had to paint the details from memory. But I can keep studying the scene for the overall color relationships.

Thunderheads, plein-air oil, 16 x 20 inch.

Brightest whites and sharpest details are reserved for the emerging billows at the top. Purer white colors of the closer clouds transition more toward warm pink or dull orange as the clouds go back in space. Light that has traveled farther has lost more of its cool wavelengths through scattering.

With these cumulus castellanus thunderheads, I look for the fractus shreds of old clouds sheared off by wind currents, dissolving back into the air, the other side of the cloud’s life cycle of growth and decay. They lack the compact density of the billowing clouds, and are never as white.

---

More in my book Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter