Rainy Tutorial

Dripped Water
Today I wanted to show you some simple methods to show, wet, drippy things. i know I've shown water drops in earlier posts, reflections on water, but I figured you can never have enough water tutorials, as water can be pretty tricky.

I started by choosing my light source and coloring the galoshes in shades of yellow. The scanner didn't pick it up, but I used Y06, Y38, and E35. The E35 helped tone down the shadows, otherwise they would have looked glowing orange instead of shaded yellow.


When we want something to look wet or shiny, the best way is to have very strong contrast between light and dark. In this case, we'll want the puddle of water to look wet, and we'll make the galoshes shiny, and add drops of water on both the umbrella and the galoshes. Since the image is so tiny, I'm going to worry about adding contrast back in later.


Next, I colored the water with B41. I want this to look dimensional, so I left strong white highlights on the edges that were closest to the light. I darkened the shadows with B45 and added a dark rim around the bottmo edge, especially on the shaded edges of the water. Already, the water is looking more wet and is catching the shadows from the boots and umbrella nicely. Now we can move on to coloring the umbrella.


I want the umbrella to be pink and purple. Notice that the way the light is shining, it is the inside of the umbrella that will be the brightest, not the outside. Also, keep in mind that the bottom of the umbrella outside will have darker shadow than the top of the umbrella, as there is less light bouncing around under the umbrella.

I colored the purple areas with B12, B17 and a hint of B79 to darken it up. Then, I colored the pink areas with RV00, RV02, RV04, and a hint of E04 to tone down the neon pink on the outside of the umbrella, yet keep the same feel of the base pink tone.

Now I am ready to add some drips of water. To do this, I start by grabbing my darker blue, B45 and adding spots on strategic places around the boots and umbrella. Don' go crazy- just add enough to make it look like it still has some drips left on the surface.

Last, with a tiny brush, take a jar of Opaque White and a really tiny brush and add a speck of white back into the center of each drop. Add a couple shiny highlights onto the edges of the galoshes that sick out closest to the light. To make the water appear shiny I added a couple simple parallel lines along the surface.

Now I have a pair of drippy wet boots and a wet umbrella. I hope you have a dry day today and have fun coloring!