Painterly Skies

Above: Sunrise, August 27, 2014  (this dramatic vista lasted about 30 seconds!)

July 12, 2017, 8:09 a.m.

Alfred East’s Landscape Painting in Oil Colour continues to be the most popular book I ever recorded for LibriVox. Currently (March, 2021), it has been downloaded more than 265,000 times. East famously begins his chapter on “Skies” by writing “If you make a practice of painting a sky every morning with the regularity that you take your bath, you will find at the end of six months that you know something of its variations.” Over the last couple of years, I’ve taken East’s advice to heart, only, not being a skilled landscape painter, I’ve tried to capture the ever changing moods of the Midwestern sky-scape with my camera instead of paint.

The moody sky photo above I took on July 12, 2017. I was out walking when a fast moving, sudden rain squall bore down from the North. I could hear thunder in the distance and headed back toward my car. The thunder grew louder, growling at my back. I turned around to look, and saw these menacing clouds rolling toward me.

Another moody sky

Pink Sunrise, October 21, 2017

Spring, 2018 is just beginning to arrive in the Midwest, as I write this post (March 10, 2018). Clear, cold mornings make for some beautiful sky-scapes, looking out over the prairie.

March 8, 2018

See more sky-scapes on Sunrise blog post.