My 11 year old told me my clouds looked like mashed potatoes and she was right
I'd been fighting this sky for three nights. Big marsh scene, low clouds, and I kept going back over them with more white and more grey and they just got heavier and heavier until they looked like a plate of leftovers. My daughter walks by with a popsicle, looks at it maybe four seconds, and goes "those look like mashed potatoes." Didn't even stop walking.
She was right. I'd been painting what I thought clouds look like instead of the ones I actually see out the window. Went out on the porch at 7:40 that night and the real ones had all these warm pinky edges underneath and huge soft gaps of blue showing through, and they were way thinner than what was on my canvas. Repainted the whole sky in about an hour and it finally breathes.
Anyway, the kid is now getting a vote on all my skies. Which is going to be annoying and also probably good for me.
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That four-second look is worth more than three nights of fighting it. Children have no politeness around images yet, they just say the thing.
The part that stays with me is that you were painting the idea of clouds, not the ones at your window. I do cyanotypes of the coast and I catch myself doing the same, printing the sea I have in my head instead of the one in front of me that day. The real water is always stranger and softer than the remembered version.
The pinky undersides at 7:40, that is the whole thing. Light from below, not above. You probably already know this, but the heaviness comes from working the tops. The gaps are where it breathes.