In planning a painting the most important step is getting the idea. Sometimes on my travels I will write a few notes about my impressions as well as taking photographs of places and things which take my interest.

The first thing to do is prepare the paper by stretching it on a drawing board.

Stage 1
Even before I start the drawing for a picture it is important to plan from which side I want the light to come in this case it will be from left to right. Stage one in any painting is the drawing, I use a 2b pencil to lightly do the sketch. I work out at this stage what the major point of interest is going to be (in this case it will be the house and the bend in the road) everything else is of secondary importance.
Once I have the drawing finished I start with the sky. In the case of this painting I first mixed some cobalt blue and in another mixing tray some lemon yellow.

I then wet the area of the sky with water and very quickly washed in some lemon yellow into the bottom of the sky, while the paper was still wet I started at the top right and brought in the cobalt blue, leaving some areas of white paper showing where the clouds would appear. As I worked my way down the sky more water was added to the cobalt to lighten it, and it was blended into the lemon yellow.