Collecting Skies

One of the joys of being a landscape painter is the constant challenge of portraying the sky. Constable famously made gorgeous semi-abstract colour sketches of clouds wherever he went and I think most artists do something similar.
In this era of the digital camera - particularly the phone camera - I suspect that artists like myself are constantly turning their lenses skyward.
To go back to Constable, the great artist once said that the sky was the chief organ of a painting and he was absolutely right. A good sky will tell three-quarters of the story.
On the right is a painting I made last year of Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales, near where I live. It's high up in an area where the winds from the North Sea meet up with those from the Irish Sea and the skies are frequently dramatic.

Below are some sky studies taken in the last few weeks. From top left clockwise: a beautiful cloud over Kyrenia harbour and sunset over St. Hilarion Castle - both in Northern Cyprus, a winter moon over the English Lake District and a spectacular sunset near Sedgefield in County Durham.