The History of the Kingdom of The West
Scrolls

Painting the Sky

Photo and Contribution
by Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

Painting the Sky
The sky area was painted in using three colors: Ultramarine Blue, Prussian Blue, and Payne's Gray.

The ultramarine was mixed with white to make a pale color along the line of the mountains; pure ultramarine, prussian, and Payne's were mixed up in big lots. The key to doing a very large area like this is to move fast and do it all in one go to keep from having too many streaky bits and brush marks marring it, and to keep it as wet as possible, which means using a lot of paint.

The very pale ultramarine was laid in carefully along the edge of the mountains and brought upwards; I kept trying to keep the arch out of it but as my hand moved across the paper in broad sweeps, it just had a tendency to make a slight arch rather than a straight line. This area was kept wet along the upper edge and straight ultramarine was laid down in a thick line across the paper starting around a quarter of an inch away from the edge of the pale color, not touching it. Once a band was painted all the way across, the brush was rinsed off and then more of the pale color was picked up. The lighter color was worked up into the darker one, moving quickly all the time.

Once the margin between the pale blue and the straight ultramarine blue was smoothed out, the brush was rinsed again and then went back into the ultramarine. Ultramarine was worked farther up the sky, then the brush was rinsed and a band of Prussian blue was laid in; again, not touching the lighter color below. Rinse the brush; pick up the ultramarine and it was worked into the Prussian blue.

This process was repeated with the Prussian blue and Payne's gray until the entire sky was painted in. Some areas had to be reworked; if the paint got too watered down or light on the brush, the white under painting would either show through, or the white paint would start to "move" and get into the blue; sometimes if would boil up through if the blue paint pooled into a little puddle on top of it. An old hand held hair dryer was used to dry things, especially stubborn puddles; once dry, a band of paint could be laid down across that area.

Eventually it got about as good as it was going to and I stopped. The sky was not as smooth as I would have liked (it's gouache after all, not watercolor or oils), but it was fairly even and any irregularities would be disguised by what was going to go on top of it. -- Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

The West Kingdom History Website was created by and is maintained by Hirsch von Henford (mka Ken Mayer).