A first attempt at painting clouds (actually a first attempt at trying to paint anything other than a figure). It reminds me of caramel. I used a reference very loosely: http://www.nesky.org/gallery/colorado_album/day3/hires/Sky.JPG. I just wanted to get an idea of what a sky looks like since it's been a while since I stepped out of the dungeon.

I wasn't confident enough to really go in there and paint with full blown contrast. Hopefully as I get more practice, I can do these a lot more quickly and with more variation in colors and values.

I tried to be fairly systematic with my approach so that I wouldn't lose myself in chaos. I worked from darks to lights with bigger, less opaque brushes for shadows and worked towards smaller, more opaque brushes for highlights. I didn't allow myself to go back to the previous steps for this one.

I want to focus primarily on drawing fantasy people and creatures, but I'd like to be able to sketch in some very basic backgrounds some day for these characters to reside in, so I'm starting off by practicing clouds.