Today, for Week 2 of Dianna Shyne’s “Cloud Challenge” at Acrylic University, the reference photo was a Tuscan sunset.
I repurposed a 6×6 canvas panel for this. My orange is a mixture of Pyrrole Red and Cad-Free Yellow Medium.

Today, for Week 2 of Dianna Shyne’s “Cloud Challenge” at Acrylic University, the reference photo was a Tuscan sunset.
I repurposed a 6×6 canvas panel for this. My orange is a mixture of Pyrrole Red and Cad-Free Yellow Medium.

The other day I was on Instagram, and something came up in my feed about Acrylic University, an art site I wasn’t aware of until that moment. I checked it out and signed up for an 8-week “Cloud Challenge” class taught by Dianna Shyne. This painting was done today in that class.


Overall, I like the colors, but this looks more like a stained-glass abstract than puffy clouds.
For this study, I used another of my own photos — this one taken one evening in early December of 2021 from my backyard. The Moon was actually a crescent at the time, but I had a cheap smartphone at the time with a lousy camera, so it looks full, and I carried on with that in my painting. Jupiter is shining above the Moon, and Venus is near the silhouette of the chimney.
This was done on a 4×6 piece of 300 lb. cold-pressed watercolor paper. The house silhouette is blue-black, and the sky was painted in tints of dioxazine purple. The Moon, Jupiter and Venus are painted in a yellow-white mix.


This 4×6 painting in acrylic on 300 lb. cold-pressed watercolor paper is based off a photo I took in Dec 2021 near sunset.
Colors used for the tree and roof silhouette: Chromium Oxide Green, Alizarin Crimson, and a touch of Cerulean Blue
Colors used for the sky: Cerulean Blue, Phthalo Blue, Cad-free Orange, Cad-free Yellow, Titanium White, Blue Gray
