Look along the outer edge of your clouds drawing and create sharp edges around areas that should stand out more. For the areas that should be soft – use your fingers to smudge the edges of the clouds sketch to soften them up.
How To Draw Clouds – Drawing Clouds with Charcoal
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Learn how to draw clouds with this step by step tutorial! Cloud drawing can be one of the most satisfying subjects to draw as they are so ephemeral and allow for a lot of imagination on your part.
Drawing clouds can be especially fun when you are outside for the day and would like to spend a little bit of time creating some art. The amount of supplies needed when learning how to draw a cloud are minimal. As when drawing, you do not have to laden yourself with heavy painting supplies!
For this drawing clouds with charcoal tutorial. All you will need is paper, an eraser and some charcoal – though a pencil will be fine as well
Cloud drawing video tutorial preview
You can find the entirety of the How to Draw Clouds video tutorial directly above, at the bottom of this article.
The materials I used to create the cloud drawing in this how to draw clouds tutorial were: bob’s vine charcoal, a faber castell eraser and charcoal paper. I use the flat side of the charcoal (as seen in image) so I can create wide marks and create simplified value shapes. Avoid using the end part of the charcoal – this will only allow you to create lines.
Use the wide length of the charcoal to draw with
In the image above you can see how I use the wider length portion of the charcoal to create wide marks with. Doing this will allow me to focus on creating tonal values while I’m drawing my clouds.
Start by drawing the lower part of the cloud
We will start learning how to draw a cloud, by drawing the shadow area of the lower part of the cloud. There are never going to be perfectly straight lines when it comes drawing clouds. So try to observe the silhouette shape of the lower part of the cloud against the lighter area above it.
How to draw clouds? 3 min read
In simple words, we can say that a cloud is basically a water vapor in the sky that gets condensed into very small water droplets which later appear in visible shapes above the ground level.
As soon as the water evaporates and turns into an invisible gas, it rises up into the sky. Furthermore, when it gets high enough to where the air is colder, the water droplets get condensed and change from a gas to drops of water or crystals of ice.
These are the drops that we see as clouds. Later these drops fall back down to earth as rain, and the process repeats again. This cycle is popularly known as the “water cycle”.
Variety of clouds that you can draw
Drawing is something that doesn’t see any boundary. And therefore when it comes to drawing clouds, most of the kids begin with a very simple puffy shape, which is fine for the starting.
However, one day they may observe that their clouds are all looking the same, and a quick glance at nature will tell them that such a thing is not what happens in real life. In general, no matter whether the close clouds are large and far away ones are small, most of the clouds come in all kinds of shapes.
You’ll find endless shapes there in the sky- tall and fat, wide and irregular, just remember that the sky’s the limit when it comes to observing and drawing them all just a little bit differently.
If you are someone who’s looking forward to making more realistic clouds, we have added a list of sample clouds that you must definitely try out.
You must also try the amazing shades available in crayons set to make your clouds look more perfect and glowing. After looking at the following sample, you’ll get a fair idea to show up and make the rest of the cloud look extra white and puffy!
Materials that you may require
- Pencil
- Drawing paper
- Black sharpie marker
- Crayons
- Eraser
- In the first step, all you have to do is draw a curved line to form a half circle. This will act as the top part of your cloud.
- Along with the previous curve, draw a smaller curved line overlapping the first. By doing so, you are actually giving your cloud a fluffy shape.
- Once again, draw another short, curved line that must overlap the first one.
- Just repeat the steps again. You just need to draw a series of connected, curved lines from one side of the cloud to another.
- Add more and more short, curved and connected lines. Connect the bottom of the cloud to enclose the shape of the cloud with its remaining side.
- In this step, you need to add more details to your cloud, giving it texture and depth. To make it more unique, draw several sets of connected as well as curved lines within the interior of the cloud. This will result in causing a fluffy appearance. After this, you must allow some of the lines to curl into deep spirals.
- Now it’s time to draw another small cloud behind the first. You may use overlapping or curved lines to enclose an irregular, fluffy shape to your cloud.
- You may add curved lines in order to add details to the interior of the smaller cloud drawn in the previous step. Furthermore, try to draw more and more clouds all around using connected, curved lines.
- Time to color your cloud. We generally observe clouds to be of white color or a little bit bluish. But in reality, those aren’t the only colors they can be. Once you observe the clouds closely, then you’ll observe that storm clouds can be black, grey, brown, or even green. It wouldn’t be surprising to note pink, purple and other similar shades. This happens because, during sunrise or sunset, clouds usually reflect shades of pink, purple, orange, or red.
