**This tuorial was written using PSP7 but should also work in earlier versions!**

What you will need:
PSP7 or earlier
A sense of adventure!
 
 

open a new image 300 x 300, transparent background, 16.7 million colors

Add a new layer and name it "sky"
flood fill  it with a dark medium blue, I chose to use #5D80F3.
Now with your selection tool  set on rectangle, select about half of the window

Flood fill  the selected area with a lighter blue color. I chose to use #C6D2FA. Deselect

You should now have something that looks like this:

Now comes the fun!! Are you ready to paint?? Lets begin!

On your tool bar click on your retouch Tool  and set it to the following

now to your image, what you want to do is "push" some of the light blue color into the dark blue color.  While you are pusing up vertically also make sure to mover your mouse in a back and forth manner.

you should produce something like this

Now do the same thing but in the opposite direction pulling some of the dark color in to the light blue

Now what you want to do is think like a painter and keep moving that "paint" alternating  between moving the dark paint down and the light paint up.  Try and grab some of the "mixed" color as well and push it up or down.  What we are trying to achieve is a "mottled effect" like this:

Also try and make sure that you leave some of the dark color at the top and some of the light color at the bottom completly untouched.  But not strait across, you want the solid color to have a good jagged edge to it.

Now, still on your retouch tool  change the settings to the following

Now we want to smudge that paint around and lose some of those "diffined" lines within each color.
What you want to do is first starting right at the top of the image, pull the smudge tool right to the bottom, then start at the top again and keep smudging DOWN working your way across the image until you reach the end

As you can see by the image above, we have succeeded in "smudging the paint.  Now using the same effect work from the bottom up.

Then you want to use the same effect working from left to right across the the entire image and then right to left across the entire image until you have an effect like this

You can already see our sky coming to life!  Make sure not to smudge too much or you will wind up with an image which looks like blue mud :)  Trust me, I learned that the hard way!  Try not to "smudge" more then ten times in any of the directions, you will need to space yourself out a bit because we have alot more smudging to do!!

Now go to Effects>Blur>Gaussian Blur>Raduis 4

Now repeat the entire smudging process over again trying to give the "clouds"a nice whispy effect to them.  If you want you can also experiment with short curving, diagonal, or circular  smudges...this is art! What ever looks good to you works! If it is a sunny day peek out your windows at the sky for inspiration!

Once you have your blending to a point you are happy with:

We are ready to add the foreground clouds!