Sunset, with clouds and Horse Silhouettes

🎨 A good plan is to draw the silhouettes on paper and then transfer (with graphite transfer paper) after the sky layers are done and dry. There are some nice layers there and if you make a boo-boo while drawing directly on your background, it can get messy and we don't want that! A nice clean outline is what you want, well thought out and arranged in its design.

🎨 Here is my 2-tone notan, you can use the same or create your own notan (value pattern). I have squinted, and joined together all dark values and then light values to assess the shape and space balance. I wanted to avoid a symmetrical, boring or competitive relationship between light and dark. 

This colour harmony is an analogous plus complement with yellow, yellow-orange, and orange giving a warm balance to our blue. The grey comes from mixing a version of both sides. (you will get a nice demonstration of Simultaneous Contrast when the blue background casts its complementary hue onto the grey, making it appear warmer. (Get yourself the complete Colour Workbook if you are ready to dive deep into the amazing world of colour mastery.)

STAGE 1 - Mix a mid-tone grey-blue (you could add a little burnt umber to some ultramarine, then tint to a 3 or 4 on this 0-8 tonal scale

Then blend it across diagonally to white in the lower left corner as shown. Use your spray mister to keep the blue workable and blend between the white and the blue in a radial shape down in the lower left corer as shown below.

STAGE 2 - Now add an extra glowing white area in the lower left sweet point, making sure to feather it out on all sides (one way is to just let all the paintwork off the brush and lightly circle around the edges with no paint on the brush, just feathering out what you put down before. Even white can darken a little as it dries in most acrylics, so a top-up may be necessary to get that beautiful glow.

STAGE 3 & 4 - 

* Mix a neutral grey (I used natural black made with burnt umber and ultramarine blue). Tint it to a value that is about a 4-5 on this value scale.

* Scumble this grey into cloud shadow shapes,  in circular movements, feathering the edges with little or no paint, spray mist from 40 cm away to keep the shadow shapes humid for when you add the highlights next.

* Add white around the lower edges of the shadow shapes(where the light from the sun hits), use a second dry brush to feather all edges as you go. When working in acrylic, (unless you have Winsor&Newton special no-darken formula) you will want to revisit some areas with another scumble of white to increase the brightness, especially on the parts closest to the sun

STAGE 5 - Once the last stages are dry, grab your transparent yellow (I used transparent yellow oxide), spray mist the sky to allow for easy spreading of a very thin glazed layer (I allowed the sky blue to remain unglazed in most areas, just covered the clouds with a thin veil of yellow oxide hue.

STAGE 6, 7, 8 - I repeated the glazing step, only this time with Red transparent oxide. I avoided the areas of clouds closest to and around the sun, leaving the lighter yellow to show more there. I also did not glaze either the yellow or the red transparent oxide on the blue areas, except for the lower right side where it is a little hazy.

Then I transferred my horse line drawings with graphite transfer paper (Saral brand), following this with a decent layer of solid black, actually, I use a natural black made from Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber. (cheap burnt umber pigment is never very dark, so it won’t make a good black, best to use carbon or mars black.