When I redid the layout room I thought I'd have a lash at a sky - rather than painting everything light blue like I did on the previous layout.
So, this time I looked at the sky over some months until I thought I found one I could do (I'm no artist). First thing I did was go to my local hardware store on the day, grabbed a range of their colour cards in light blue, and walked outside to match them against the lower horizon sky. Important this, do not compare them with the sky overhead. It is a much bluer colour all together. Get a tin of ceiling white if you don't have some at home. One blue colour is fine, as when we look at our layout, we only see a field of about 20 - 30 degs up from the horizon. Finding that, nip off home, get out the roller and start painting.
The first stage clouds. Decided to do the streaky (cirrus?) cluds first as these are higher, and the big fluffy ones cover them up - which means we can paint them in later. The fluffies, I mean (cumulonimbus?) Streaky smeary clouds are easy. 2" paintbrush and bucket with a household sponge in it. Streak of white paint with brush, smear horizontally with sponge until a lot of it is smeared back off. Bucket of water gets very white, and so do your hands.
The second stage clouds. Firstly, I had been given some tubes of artists gouache (Jo something) by another friend so I used this. Acrylic, you can even get it at hardware stores as well as craft and artists supplies. Now here, I asked an artist lady who lives across the road for help in getting colours right. Her advice was load a pallette (off cut of ply in my case) and squirt on a lot of white, a little grey (or even less black), a little yellow, a little blue and the tiniest, tiniest pinpoint of red. Be very careful with red! Although it can add warmth to the clouds, I had to redo one or two pink fluffies. Then basically, using a 1" or smaller brush and the faithfull sponge, paint your clouds. Lot of white, use it liberally. Paint a great big cloud - 2 feet or so. Mix a little grey with the white - a very little grey - and dab this over the cloud, more towards the centre and lower part of the cloud, and on the side furtherest from where the sun is on your layout. Vary this colour a bit with the yellow and blue mixed into white, and very occasionally the tiniest hint of red. Feather the edges using the sponge, then highlight areas in the darker areas using pure white.
The next cloud will follow the basic formula, just change the colours very slightly. Don't forget to overlap clouds, they do in real life! Fun can be had by doing one cloud a distinct (but lightened) grey as a rain cloud.
That's about it. I asked my artist neighbour about clouds and she said "Clouds are personal - if you think they look like clouds, they're clouds". I had a great time doing this. Now, to summon up the courage and see if I can do conifer covered mountains!
Steve Newcastle NSW Aust