Soft and bold

We had a break in the clouds yesterday afternoon around 4 pm and these ragged clouds broke up in the eastern sky. The soft, dark compressed Conte charcoal and soft vine charcoal creates a rich texture especially when I worked back into it with chamois leather, a blending tortillion and an eraser. I find the tortillion rather a grand name because when I was in art school we called them stumps.


The two little soft clouds in the upper left were vague and puffy to the point of fading away. I think they are more examples of fractus clouds above and below the large irregular stratocumulus.

Rain and nimbostratus clouds

Nimbostratus clouds are our friendly gray rain clouds. They are low clouds with undulating dark and light masses of soft cloud hanging over our heads.  Nimbostratus form along warm fronts due to the slowly rising air. 


The nimbostratus clouds often have a layer of pannus clouds below them. Pannus is a massed layer of multiple fractus clouds. 


These dark nimbostratus rain clouds covered the sky on Saturday, September 17th for most of the day. It was wonderful to watch them moving and changing shape and color.