Painting Skies in Pastel

Praise

LIBRARY JOURNAL, Oct 2023

Artist Orme’s book teaches painters how to create skies and clouds using the art medium, not the color palette, of pastels. The book gives detailed instructions on choosing pastels and preparing them, setting up, taping paper, and deciding which colors to use to achieve the best results. It is worth noting that the pastel brand featured in this book might not be available in all regions, so readers may need to determine an equivalent that will work as well. Specific step-by-step projects are outlined: “Blue Sky, White Clouds,” “Cloudburst,” “Windy Weather,” “Vivid Sunset,” “Stormy,” and “Delicate Sunrise.” While the author goes to great lengths to break down techniques in a clear way that yields gorgeous results, this might not be an appropriate book for true beginning artists. At the end, there’s a “Pastel Sky Clinic,” which covers determining when the painting is finished and managing mistakes. It also explains techniques that are a little more complicated that will help readers create sunbeams and cloud wisps.
VERDICT A great title for refining or learning pastel sky techniques. Best for artists who already have some experience working in this medium.

Art Book Review – Jan 2024

Subject-based books mostly feature watercolour and, occasionally oils. It’s a pleasure, therefore, to find one for pastellists. If a publisher is going to take a slightly bold step and test the marketing waters, skies are a good place to start. Landscapes are a reliable subject and they always involve a sky. It’s also fair to say that, if you get the sky wrong, nothing else will look right either, no matter how good you are at water, trees or blue regressing hills.

On that basis, I’m going to assume that you’re not going to go out into the field, suitable surface and carefully chosen set of colours in hand (Sandra has advice on both) and paint just the sky This, I’d venture to suggest, is an exercise for the longer evenings and that using Sandra’s excellently varied demonstrations will help you nicely along the way. 

Sandra begins with the usual survey of tools, materials and working methods. You might be tempted to skip this, but you’ve paid for it and, bearing in mind that this is a specialised area, it’s at least worth giving it a look over. The rest of the book is given over to six full demonstrations that cover clouds, rain, wind, sunrises and sunsets. As I said before, skies are part of a landscape and elements appear that will give context and scale, but Sandra has not forgotten her brief and they don’t distract from the main subject.