74 Artists&Illustrators
skies
Paintin
TECHNIQUEI
still recall, with a shudder,
overhearing a conversation
between two students on a
painting course when one confidently
informed the other “I never bother
about planning the sky when painting
a landscape, it’s just the blue bit at
the top of the painting”. When one
considers that the conversation was
taking place near Flatford Mill in
Suffolk, on the very spot beside the
River Stour where The Hay Wain was
painted almost 200 years ago by oneof this country’s most accomplished
painters of skies, John Constable, you
might understand my shudder. Skies
are so much more than simply the
“bit at the top”.
Skies are an essential element of a
landscape or seascape, and an artist
that fails to consider the sky does so
at their peril. As Constable himself
suggested, “The landscape painter
who does not make his skies a very
material part of his composition –
neglects to avail himself of one of hisgreatest aids!” To look upon skies as
simply a ‘backdrop’ would be to miss
a painterly opportunity; they offer so
much more.
Constable considered the sky to
be the dominant light source and as
such it would have a direct influence
on the landscape below; highlighting
some parts, casting shadows over
others, altering colours and tones.
The relationship between sky and
land is inseparable in his work.
Examine the effect a dull sky has overThere is far more to a sky than “the blue bit
at the top” of a landscape painting, says
ROB DUDLEY. He shares useful advice for
capturing the heavens in all their glory