Watercolor Clouds

Watercolor clouds, I think, might be one of the trickiest things with this form of art. Since the watercolor paper is the white of the painting the shadows that make up the clouds are what get painted. Today, we learned the blotting method. I started out by painting my background with a very pigmented mix of a couple Windsor Newton shades of blue. After it completely dried, I wet the area where I wanted my moon to be with a wet paintbrush and gently rubbed on the area to loosen the paint. I then used a paper towel to pick up the water now mixed with the paint. I pretty much did the same thing for the clouds except I only blotted out the areas where I wanted the highlights of the clouds to be. I also splattered on the stars with white gouache which is an opaque watercolor paint. My instructor said that it looked "lyrical" :) So sweet of her!