Want to create stunning watercolor raindrops paintings? This 5-step tutorial is perfect for beginners to capture the realism of looking out a window on a lazy, rainy day.
You will learn to capture its movement, reflections, and the overall mood it creates.
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Understanding Rain Scenes
Your first step is to capture the mood and atmosphere in rain scenes. You also want to consider the emotional tones rain can invoke.
Like a gloomy rainy day, or the gentle sounds of raindrops against your window. Or a gloomy rainy day in the city and everything looks all one color. Grey and dreary. It all depends on your perspective on what you want the story to tell in your composition.
You want to know the key elements of rainy days. For instance, are you looking out a window and seeing reflections from the window glare and rain droplets running down the window? Or are you outside and there are puddles and people with umbrellas and the way the puddles have reflections or the way the rain bounces off the umbrella?
I will be showing you two scenarios that will have you painting watercolor raindrops and rain reflections in no time!
Preparing to Watercolor Raindrops Scenes
If you follow me on this blog, you already know I love to use Canson cold-pressed watercolor paper, pan paints, and a #2 and #6 brush. I will also be using a 005 micro pen and an old plastic card along with masking fluid.
Our color palette will include Payne’s Grey, Indigo, Ultramarine Blue, and Ivory Black.
You will also need masking fluid and an old cheap paintbrush. This will help in creating your watercolor raindrops on windows. I will show you a few different simple scenarios
To create those watercolor raindrops, we will first learn to sketch them to understand how you will use the same technique to watercolor them. See the image below.
Using a pencil, create a circle and lightly shade the area around the circle for reference. You won’t do this on your watercolor paper, as you will have a background already in place.
Under that circle, shade the bottom to create a shadow. At the top part of the circle, inside the circle, add some shade there as well but, leave a bit of a white spot to add extra glare.
Watercolor Techniques for Rain Effect
We will look at two different scenarios to paint the illusion of rain and raindrops.
Using the above sketch raindrop practice, you will now try that with watercolors. Scene one will be a stormy window with watercolor raindrops on the glass. Scene two will be a very rough, but effective way to paint a rainy day in the city.
Scene One
The watercolor technique you will use here is masking fluid to create the watercolor raindrops and the rain that is running down the glass window. You will first tape off your watercolor paper because you will be using a wet-on-wet technique and that tends to buckle your paper.
Using your masking fluid, create the outline of the window including the window panes inside. With that masking fluid, make or splatter dots for the rain and then make squiggle lines to emulate the rain running down the panes of the window. Allow to dry completely.
Using the wet-on-wet technique, make a clean water wash over your entire area. Once completely wet, use your ultramarine blue, Payne’s grey, indigo, and ivory black, and with diagonal strokes, take each color individually and sweep over your paper. Do this until completely covered with a stormy-like effect outside the window.
Let that dry completely, then take your fingers and lightly remove the masking fluid by rubbing upward with your finger. It should be removed easily as well as feel gummy, and roll into a ball-like substance. Keep lightly rubbing your finger over the entire surface getting rid of the remainder of the mask on your raindrops, etc.
Using a #2 round or a liner brush, use the same technique as in your practice sketch, to paint your watercolor raindrops. Ultramarine blue is your best choice of pigment. For the running drips, outline one side of the drip.
You may also want to shadow your window pane and I used Payne’s grey to do this. My windows are very wonky and have a more farmhouse look, you can do whatever color you want to paint your outer window part. Let dry completely.
Scene Two
In this watercolor rainy cityscape, you will use one color. I chose indigo for this composition. You can use Payne’s grey, purple, or any rainy-day color you choose.
You will also be using more than just a paint brush. An old credit card, brush, and micro pen.
Take your old credit or plastic card and cut off a 1 1/2″ strip. Mix a generous amount of your pigment with water to dredge one end of your plastic strip, front and back. See the image below for a more detailed look at how to create your city buildings in the background by pressing down one end of the card and dragging it up and down to create those skyscrapers.
Do this in varying heights along the length of the paper, but, don’t let them fill in the whole way. If there are skips and white space, that’s okay!
Using the same technique to grab your paint, use that plastic to create a pathway from one of the buildings to the lower end of your paper. Remember to start out with the path thinner in the distance and widening as you come closer to the foreground.
Now take your paintbrush with clean water only and pull some of that paint away to create a puddling effect here and there. See the finished image for reference.
Allow that all to dry. Using the side edge and length of your plastic card, dredge that through your wet pigment and on a slant create the look of rain falling. Do that in about five places at varying heights as you want some of them to look like they are hitting the path. Allow that to dry completely.
Adding Life and Detail to Your Scene
Adding more detail to your rainy day scenes can bring it to life on a larger scale, or you can leave it as is. As the artist of your creations, you have the choice. If you want to add more, here are some suggestions:
People and Umbrellas: In your cityscape, you can use that same color and add a person walking away from you carrying an umbrella.
Raindrops Hitting the Ground: Use a very fine micro pen and make more rainfall and where it meets the path, make little splash-like curves coming up from the ground at the base of the rain.
Windows and Antennas on the Buildings: Use your micro pen to draw in these details by making L shapes for windows and t shapes for antennas. It does give it more character and life.
Finishing Touches
As always with any painting you create, you want to step back and access the overall balance and mood of the painting. If you need to make adjustments, you can do so. My only advice to that is to not overwork it. It is so easy to do.
I will tell you that in my window painting, I was a bit put out that I made my raindrops a bit too big as well as my water drips, but I’m not mad about it. I thought about doing it over, but you know what? That is not my style. My watercolor art style is more of a messy look for compositions like these.
The only time I venture away from that style is if I want it to look more realistic. I love to use micro pens with my watercolors and prefer a looser look to my paintings.
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Your watercolor style may be different, and you want a more polished look and I think that is fantastic! With practice and patience, you will be able to achieve that, if you already haven’t.
I would love to have you join my Facebook Group, Watercolor Tutorials and Inspiration for more tips, tricks, and tutorials as well as I hope for you to be inspired by what all I have to offer.
Stay Colorful, Stay Creative, and HAVE FUN!
~Laurie
