skying

That's what John Constable used to call it when he made quick sketches - in oil or in watercolor - of the fleeting forms of clouds. He was informed and intrigued by the meteorological investigations of the time by Luke Howard, above all, who first categorized clouds and gave them their scientific names.  It was Constable in the grad class today - and Gainsborough, and Thomas Cole, and a handful of others; it's Constable tomorrow in my undergrad class - and that means that it becomes quite hard remembering and calibrating who knows what ...