A tiny little exercise with surprise results -

This was an experiment on a little 4x5 inch canvas board. I painted the entire board that "cloud red" color and then worked backwards to cut the sky back in around it. Maybe you guys have been doing it that way all along but it was new to me. I loved the results. Its also the way I did the sky scape on my last painting of Nuestra de Senora Refugio, the one with the massive thunderhead cloud. Then I quickly blocked in some mesas to establish proportion. This was very quick and lots of fun.