Painting Weather: Scotland’s Ever-Changing Skies
Weather can change a painting’s mood significantly. Whether the skies are clear and blue, have puffy white clouds floating peacefully over a bright blue sky, or if the clouds have grey visible, indicating an incoming or outgoing storm, or full cloud coverage, all these aspects change the colors of the landscape that is being depicted, and naturally all convey a different mood for the entire painting.
When I was deciding on pieces to include in my Scotland series I wanted to have a variety of scenes, from idyllic landscapes with joyful, bright and beautiful colors, to a more moody composition that explored the more pensive side of Scotland’s landscapes. A painting of fishing boats out on the water with bright, saturated colors has a much different feeling than one where the sky is overcast, and the colors of the piece are much more muted. Both are appealing in their own way, and I wanted to make sure I was depicting both in this series because both options are important to enjoying Scotland and conveying the feelings I had when I was visiting as well as working on the paintings.
A Cloudy Day at the Loch
Fluid Acrylics on Paper
11.5 x 14.5, 2023
This painting was inspired by a trip to the Caledonian Canal near Inverness. The cabin is peeking out of the trees from the middle of the piece, and the combination of the grey skies, muted greens, and dark shadows created by the towering trees behind the cabin gives this painting a really peaceful feeling, like staying home to read a book on a rainy night.
Highland Pastoral
Fluid Acrylics on Paper
9.5 x 8.75, 2023
The saturated blues and greens in this piece deliberately give you a warm and inviting feeling as you look upon it. I was entranced by the Highland cows we were able to see up close when we were on a day trip through the Highlands past Inverness, and I wanted to not only show the adorable animals, but also paint the beautiful autumn day we were having. At that point in the day the sun was high, the colors were vivid, and our enjoyment was at a peak. You get a hint at the changeability of the weather though because although the sky is bright there are clouds with a hint of grey lining the skies. Later in the day we did end up getting rain, and the paintings I created were inspired by the resulting mood and atmosphere the weather created.
Kyleakin Bay at Low Tide
Fluid Acrylics on Paper
8 × 8, 2024
This painting is set in the port of Kyleakin Bay on an overcast day. At the time I decided to paint this piece I was most interested in replicating the rich yellow ochre of the seabed, but the entire landscape’s color palette, from the grey skies, to the muted greens in the trees, as well as the dark brownish green colors of the seabed alongside the ochre, really helped express the quietness of the bay on that day. It felt like everyone had gone away, including the tide, and we got to experience the landscape in a moment of rest.
These are just three of the pieces in that series, but I thought they showed some of the variety of types of weather that someone could experience both while visiting for themselves, as well as through my paintings.