LK&O

Behr 540C-2 Serene Sky

What location are you modeling?

It seems to me that the western U.S. is generally modeled with a darker blue sky than midwest or eastern locations. I'm depicting a California scene and start with a deep blue (Behr Mosaic blue) and add white to it match what I want under layout lighting conditions. The darkest blue at the top of the sky is 2 parts Mosaic blue to 1 part white. I know I am on the deeper blue end of the spectrum, but that's what I really like.

Nelson and Fort Sheppard Railway

Behr Nevada Sky (520A-3) (Flat) with a Titanium White fade from the bottom to the middle-ish. I might throw in some brown color for dust -- I have to try it out though to see if it would work.

​  

Andrew

sky color

Glidden " Wild Blue Yonder"

FYI

I bought a darker color to start with, then also bought a gallon of white latex and mixed it into the darker color as I moved down the wall. Starting at the top with the darker color, and gradually adding in more white as I moved down the wall. I tried both a roller and a brush, and it did not seem to matter either way with the results. The only problem with this is if you ever have to touch up the color....not easily done. However, strategically placed clouds can help with any problems there. I also discovered what looks blue under their lights does not mean its the same blue under my lights. Also....play with a test section ( or a piece of foam core board the same height as my backdrop in my case ) first to learn how to blend colors if you do chose to do this technique. It looks strange at first, but as it dries, it comes out pretty good ! Rick...I really like your clouds. Nice and fluffy !

Michael

What I Used

I went with Walmart Color Place "Song Blue Sonata"

It's shown here with other samples chosen for analysis under room lighting.

This was one of the prototype photos that figured into the decision.

I painted the whole surface with plain blue first.  When I finished the sky with clouds, I repainted the lower portion, fading the blue toward the horizon with PVA drywall primer

@ Andrew

Just a bit of experience and trivia.

I'm over here in Louisiana.  Once in awhile, not every year, there is a bad dust storm in far West Texas.  It will get aloft and blow into Louisiana skies.  It isn't brown.  It appears an orange pink color as the sunlight reflects off the particulates in the air.

If you are an art lover you like this trivia.  The volcano Krakatoa exploded in 1883 changing the skies around the world.  If you look at the paintings of the period there are no blue skies.  Just about every painting made following the explosion has skies of orange to pink.  There are a lot of facts that go with that explosion.  Crops failures in many locations and a year without summer around the world.

Anyway, the point is that brown is not in paintings of the skies in that time period.  We haven't seen a brown sky here after a dust storm in West Texas.  It might be different if you are caught in the middle of the dust storm and there is no sun getting through, but then again you won't be seeing much.

Den

BROWN!

LOL. Well today it was. Den in Southern Afghanistan I observed the sky would be pale to vibrant blue depending on the season and meteorological conditions. It would usually become more and more of a light brown as you neared the horizon line. Trust me that dust is brown, not orange. This wasn't related to dust storms this was just every day due to the dust kicked up by wind and traffic.

Back to today. I'm in Baghdad right now and I came out this morning to a shade of brown EVERYWHERE. Throughout the day the dust storm has pushed off and dissipated and at no point was there any orange. 

Anyway when I woke up and saw the topic I figured it had to do with shades of blue, when I opened my door I just drank in the dust and irony.

I'm partial to Behr Utah Sky

I'm partial to Behr Utah Sky (560A-3)

A Wintery Mix

I started with Valspar "Silver Leaf" - Flat.

http://m.valsparpaint.com/color-detail.php?id=1964&g=1014

Then I took small separated portions and mixed one lighter and one darker and hand painted clouds into the backdrop.

Sky color

Here is how I did it.

I used Behr Paint Little Pond Blue as my base color. I mixed it and a plain white 50/50 to create a lighter blue. I then painted the top portion of my back drop with the base blue and then painted the middle portion with the 50/50 mix and the lower portion with white. I do about a 3'-4' section at at time

While the paint is still wet I blend the colors and end up with a nice graduated sky. I like the results.

Once I was done with the base sky I added clouds

I make the base of my clouds with a 25/75 mix. 25% of the light blue 50/50 mix and 75% white. I use a soft 2" trim brush to dab on the cloud base color and then then add white over that to represent the top of the clouds. I don't wait for the paint to dry before I add the white, that way I get some natural blending of the colors. 

Practice on some scrap hardboard or backdrop material first. I think you will find that it is not all that hard to get nice results. The key is to practice. 

A quick note about the clouds I make mine big. The ones in the photo are 12"-18" long or longer. Most of us make our clouds small.I think the reason for that is we don't have something good to measure them against. The thing to remember is that clouds can be huge.  I watch them come over the mountain peak (25 miles long), and they often dwarf it.

Hope this helps.

Desaturated Red

Ok may be not brown per se, but a desaturated red (look to the left of the color picker at the little circle crosshair with a one next to it) I have also seen it go to a desatureated greyish blue color as well.

It depends on the time of day,time year, and what direction you are looking.  We get more dirty colors as the forest fire season kicks off in the summer as well.

Andrew

Our skies

Computer monitor colors all differ, we know that. Still, I thought it might be fun to see together the sky colors in this thread. Chime in with your color and I'll add you to the chart.

Updated to include HN1951's sky color.
Updated to include Rick Sutton's as applied color.
Updated to include Marty McGuirk's sky color.
Updated to include ctxmf74's custom mix.
Updated to include tom oconnell's sky color.
Updated to include alcoted's sky color.
Updated to include noah_count's sky color.

Nice

I thought about doing that last night as well Alan, it will be neat to see what everyone is using.

Andrew

Thanks Alan

Charles

Sky color

I use a color known as Olympic First Light (A52-1, Flat).  This was selected by comparing paint swatches to photos (my actual photo prints, not computer printed) of the area (New River Gorge area of WV) and time of year modeled (September/October) under layout lighting conditions.  Seems to work well.

Rick

[Moderator edit] Your color has been added to the chart on page 2

Depends...

I am looking for a new blue as I change the scenery on my layout...but the right color can vary depending on atmospiheric conditions, time of day, altitude, and location. The canyonlands of northwestern Arizona tend to have blazing blue skies, but in the summer they haze a bit into a more faded blue. Need to pick a color to approximate late morning to early afternoon in the spring.

color chart

 Wow! My blue looks like it is way out of balance with everyone else. For the record the Mosaic blue is cut with white before I apply it to the backdrop. Personally I feel that my style of layout doesn't "read" right with a pale blue sky (as my scenery tends to be so sun bleached looking) so I start with a color that won't go towards baby blue when diluted with white. The heaviest blue at he top of my backdrop is diluted 2 blue to 1 part white and then as it goes down toward the horizon more white is added.

 Still, I gotta admit that I do like a lot of blue!

@ Rick

Rick, I color sampled your image at the top of the backdrop in an area that appears representative of your starting blend of 50/50 blue white. The chip chart was updated.

For my basic blue

I use Behr (Home Depot) "Silver Strand" 

Horizon line "haze" is created by horizontal "scrubbing" of Titanium White with some of the sky blue color mixed in. 

[Moderator edit] Your color has been added to the chart on page 2

  Bargain bin.  For my new I

Bargain bin.  For my new layout I couldn't decide between the similar blues so layout I'm using a gallon I found in the Home Depot error shelf for $5 .   They painted out the mix tag info so all I know is it's Behr Ultra Plus. Here's a shot of the roughed in  backdrop with the blue and white blend  started. After all the benchwork and track is down and I know where everything fits  I'll refine it to match the scenery. ....DaveB

[Moderator edit] Your color has been added to the chart on page 2

 ​

Sky colour and Mood

As a landscape painter the sky is used to create the mood for a picture. I might want a stormy sky or a sunny sky depending on how I want the viewer to feel about the painting. The actual colour of the sky is irrelevant, I sometimes paint the sky yellow, or maybe orange if that is the feeling that I want the painting to present.

For blue skies, we often add a tiny bit of green, or some yellow and pink down at the horizon. It all depends on the mood that you wish to convey. So the colour you choose depends on the colours of the rest of your scenery and the saturation level of those scenery colours. Most MR's tend to go too dark with their colours, the hues needed indoors are at least an order of magnitude lighter than what you see under bright sunshine. The lighter blues in the examples shown that have a hint of green to them would work best in an indoor space if we want to have the feeling of a bright summer's day.

Hi--Sorry no picture--took

Hi--Sorry no picture--took pic of background and proceeded to drop my I-phone to the cement. Well my wife and I were talking about getting new ones!. I use Glidden's Big Chill from the HD--#90BG-72/063. LED lights.

[Moderator edit] Your color has been added to the chart on page 2

Periwinkle Blue

At the WRMRC, as with many fundamental club issues we put the choice of blue to a vote (since we all had to live with the result we felt democracy was the best decider).

About 7 or 8 of us at a regular work session stepped outside on a beautifully clear sunny June afternoon with a barrage of blue paint chips from our local Home Depot. We then looked directly overhead (away from the sun of course) to the deepest bluish area, and held the paint samples next to it to find the closest match. We all see colours differently, so there was some disagreement of course. However the eventual winner we voted for was Periwinkle blue.

We paint our backdrops solid Periwinkle blue to start. We then airbrush diluted white paint where the horizon will be (since deep blue skies do get whitened towards the horizon due to haze and atmospheric effects) and graduate it into the backdrop. We don't bother with clouds since their placement within the backdrop plays havoc with layout photography vs. general viewing. So the effect we're going for on the Sudbury Division is a cloudless, clear sunny summer day in the Canadian Shield.

This is the final result:

There are a lot of good suggestions here in this post, but I'd recommend the same process. Take some blue paint samples and compare them to the real thing on a cloudless sunny day, and pick whatever comes closest to your eye's colour perception.

[Moderator edit] Your color has been added to the chart on page 2