Cloudscape 1 - stage 1

This will be a series of mainly small paintings of skies and clouds that I want to paint that are not going to IX as most of my work has been this past year. All the ones I'm taking are in the USA or will be soon for the show next week in Reading PA. These paintings will be trying things out and generally hoping my skies improve as I go through the series. This work will be aimed at a more "Fine Art" audience and intend to enter some of them in competitions etc as I do not want to be known purely for my Imaginative Realism work although without that work I would not have come to this point so each side of my work informs the other.
I originally had an American water tower silhouetted against the sky but I wanted the painting to be less specific with little possible narrative content so that it it is more about colour, tone and composition...so the tower was painted out.
This stage was painted with a rag using a mix of Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet thinned with Liquin and turpentine.