Layered Clouds

February 2025 – A 12″ x 24″ oil painting of a plein air ocean landscape. The objective was to create a painting that was larger than I’m used to. A lot of my paintings are either shaped as a square or a short rectangle, and as a result, I haven’t needed to think about negative space. With this painting, I had to do so either through the sky or the water.

I decided to have the horizon start 1/3 on the canvas so that I had more space to experiment with cloud formations and shading. It’s difficult for me to create clouds that have depth but don’t look like cumulonimbus. With this painting, I had to think about contrast so that the clouds were not as dark as the water and the rocks, but made it clear that the clouds were layered on top of one another.

If I made this painting again, I would change the composition of the rocks because their positioning doesn’t seem organic. I wouldn’t change the shy, but I would change the process of how I did it. Towards the end of the painting, I started overworking it, which made the clouds look more complex than they needed to be.