How I Sketch Sunsets And Sunrise

As an artist, I love to sketch skies at sunset or sunrise, I spend a great deal of time trying to capture what I see and how it makes me feel. When I sketch sunsets and sunrises, I am not so involved with accurate cloud shapes but with trying to get down the colours and patterns in the sky, the perspective of the clouds and how it all affects the scene in front of me through the interplay of light and shadow. Of course consideration of the meteorological aspects may be important for some important but is not an over-riding factor for me. I can often be seen to be taking considerable liberties with artistic licence.

This lens is not a "How-to" but a "what-I-do". I am not going to try and tell you how to approach sketching sunsets and sunrises but simply to show you how I go about it. Maybe I will add such information in a future update but there is so much variety in a beautiful sunset that the only way to learn is to go out, observe and put it down on paper. You may not get it right first time but perseverence will bring its own reward, as they say.

I have always been inspired by the colours and patterns in some ( unfortunately not all) sunrises and sunsets, who can fail to be inspired by the wonderful sights on offer?

You can return to NOT ANOTHER WATERCOLOUR TUTORIAL, or if you didn't start from there why not pop on over. It will lead to other pages filled with ideas for sketching.