Watercolor Rainfall - Easy ways to paint a rainfall

1. Welcome to class: Re-mix everyone happy in one or the Adobe. Beat ionization in the atmosphere or signals to bring rain helps us enjoy the experience and be happy. Hi, I'm swathi jihadi, a watercolor artist based out of Bangalore, India. I'm a Product Manager by profession, but definitely painting watercolors is my passion. I wish to explore unique concepts while painting a watercolor subject. And during one-off my explorations, I figured out that a palette knife or a credit card works the best when it comes to painting, a rainfall, it gives the perfect amounts of precision needed. And we feel like it is definitely a rainy-day scene. Painting rainfall in watercolors is a very calming effect on the mind as well. You can use your favorite techniques for painting a blurry background with any colors of your choice, you will have ample amount of time to focus on our main object. With the right tips and techniques, you can create a beautiful and realistic representation of a rainy day. In this class, we will cover all the concepts, the basic concepts of watercolors that is required to paint a rainy-day along with all the supplies needed. The paints composition, and we will finally come to paint. Two different class projects offer rainy-day scene. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced artist, I'm sure you'll find something new to learn in this class. So grab a hot beverage or a snack and because it is going to be rainy 2. Class Orientation: Painting a watercolor rainfall scene can be rewarding yet a challenging experience. With the right tips and techniques, you will be able to understand how to approach the scene and to understand what is the object and how to paint a rainfall. To start with, we'll go through all the materials required to paint a rainfall. The basic ones will explore how with the limited color palette, we can create a cohesive and harmonious painting by using different shades of blue, gray, and greens to create a moody and atmospheric painting. We will then explore basic watercolor techniques required for painting that, that would include wet on wet techniques, lifting technique. Dry brush technique will observe how Water control can make or break your Painting by using wet-on-wet techniques. Will also observe how quick brushstrokes are important to capture the movement and energy off rainfall will apply all these lessons learned into painting to beautiful class projects and have an amazing experience. I would highly recommend you all to post your projects in the project section along with any of the queries that you have so that I can help you and also help others who are willing to learn. But on your favorite music or grab a snack. I'll see you in the class 3. Supplies required: Let's look for all the supplies that is required for this class. Starting with the watercolor paper, I have a cold pressed 100% cotton paper from Fabriano. This is of size A5. Next is a Masking tape for taping down the paper. I have a Ceramic palette here for mixing up the colors. You can use any palette that you have. Some of the Watercolor paints that I'll be using in the class. That is cobalt, turquoise, greenish, umbo, cadmium yellow medium. Indigo. And I also have some of the pans, that is Payne's gray and Indian yellow. So all these colors I'll be sketching out in the next video. Of course, I have White gouache for adding the green. Now coming to brushes. These are some of the brushes that I will be using. Here is the Pencil that I'll be using for a rough sketch and kneadable eraser for removing excess of graphite from my sketch. Round size brushes of size 8.4 from silver brush. It has a pointed tip, hence, it is easy for me to paint. A Liner brush of size one from princeton. Flat brush of size three-fold from Princeton, Neptune. These crystals are really good for applying water or for lifting techniques. And the palette knife, you can use a palette knife of any size that you have, or a credit card as well. Let's see all the watercolor swatches in the next lesson. 4. Watercolor swatches : Okay. Coming for swatches, I'm using a round brush of size four from Silver Brush for showing all dispatches. This is greenish, amber from the brand Sennelier. It's a really great, Fine color that I love for adding any Moody paintings. It gives a very calming effect. And if you do not have the same color, you can prepare it by just mixing some indigo to your green. This is cobalt, turquoise from brand White Nights. This is one of my favorite basal color, as well as granulating color when it comes to Watercolors. Cadmium yellow medium, it gives a very good opaque texture to the painting. Since it is a cadmium family. Indigo. This is also from White Nights. This is Indian yellow from brand White Nights as well. For lifting off paint from the pan, just take some water, dip it into the pan and it can be easily activated. This is Payne's gray also from White Nights. This is White gouache. You can use any white quash or even White Watercolor. We are done with all dispatches. Now see you in the techniques lesson. 5. Techniques | Water control in wet on wet: Welcome to the techniques lesson. Here I have my sketch book open and I'll just go through all the required and basic watercolor techniques that are required for painting any rainy-day scene. So starting with wet on wet technique, I'm going to apply some water onto people and spread the water across evenly so that there are no lumps on this patch of people. I'm going to take some colors, see Payne's gray for my palette. And you can see how beautifully the color spreads on the paper. That's because there is water and it is trying to move across variable. The water is there on the people in the same patch of people. I'll take another color. Here. I'm taking Indian yellow and I'm trying to mix it. But this wet-on-wet technique, we can mix these two colors directly on the people. Even in the class projects, we will be doing this where we will use multiple colors directly on the paper. Here, I'm taking concentrated mix of the pigment and trying to apply so that when it completely dries off, we can see how each of the pigments here will behave. That is the transparent shade, as well as the pigment which is applied in the concentrated form. I'm going to apply water on the, another patch of paper here as well. Now, I'll take some cadmium yellow medium and apply it. Okay? Now I'll take some cadmium red light or you can take any other color of your choice. I have a lot of water in my brush. So when I apply, you can see how the water paint merges with the background that is applied. Now, I'll take some blue in a very concentrated form on my brush to show how differently it behaves when the paint is in concentrated form. With a swift motion, I just do one Texture and you can see that it doesn't mix with the background. Now, if I tried to mix it again, wet, there is lot of water. It makes us with the yellow and forms a shade of green. This is a very important technique for controlling water for your painting because the amount of water in your brush changes the behavior of paints, interaction with your people. So here it is more water and that is how it is behaving. When there is more paint, we see that it completely stays and doesn't spread much. We'll come back and observe how it shows going. It is completely dry. Moving on to the next technique. As we are talking about water control, Let's see what will happen if I do some water splatters on the first patch of the people, it is semi dry and I'll just take some water on my brush and tap it on the belly of my brush and absorb what will happen. Here you can observe where water droplets have formed. There is a clear indication of white part of the people. I'll repeat the same step on the people where there is lot of water and paint. And we do not observe any bifurcation in the paint. That is because here there is lot of water and more water you apply. It gets mixed up. On the left side. Water and paints are semi dry. So once you apply more of water onto it, it will remove the excess of paint. At that particular place. I'm going to apply some water again for our next technique. But this can be dry, but this can be wet on wet or wet on dry as per your choice. I'm going to take some Payne's gray and apply it on the paper here. I also have some bright blue from my palette. Mixing some random colors here that is totally of your choice. We are going to learn how to lift off and when it is the ideal time to lift off water and the paints from our palette. Here, I'm going to use Liner brush of size one from Aqua Elite Princeton. We observed how the water splatter behaves when the paper is semi dry. It is same. Same concept can be applied for lifting techniques as well. I'm keeping my paper cloth reading. I'm trying to lift some of the paints. I'm going to take some water in my brush with one swift motion and a bit of pressure, I'm going to lift the paint off. Even after I left off the paint, you can see that water spreads and mixes with the neighboring colors without forming the texture that I need for Background rain. So let's wait till the paper semi-trucks and come back and see how this effect works. That is happening. I'm going to take a card, goes, this is an expired card, and with the corner of my card, I'm going to add some lines here with bit of pressure. I will let it completely dry and come back and see how it behaves. I have let the paint to dry a bit, so now my paper is semi dry. So let me try the lifting technique. Again. I have some water on my brush and again, I'm following the same technique. You can clearly see some lines getting formed here with the amount of pressure I'm applying on my brush. This is exactly what we need for depicting Background rain. That is the rainfall that is happening a bit further from the eyesight. I would highly recommend for you to observe how with which Water consistency it works best for you with the set of brushes that you have. The help of card, you can always achieve a black lines. You can always achieve rain. But that would not be white in color. You can see the distinct rain, but in a darker shade, usually the black sheet or any darker shade of the color that you have applied. This would be a control lifting when the paper is symmetric. Now it is completely dry. Let's recall what all we have learned in our wet on wet technique. Even with wet on wet, we can directly mix paints on paper. With more water. Paint merges with the background, but with more paint in the brush, it stays as it is. Lifting technique can be useful if you have a control V of applying and lifting. When the paper is dry. These lines can be easily achieved when the paper is semi dry. And the black lines can be easily achieved with the help offer card 6. Techniques | Dry on dry using art tools: For the next techniques, let's go through wet on dry and Dry on dry. I have already applied Paint, two patches like lavender and bright violet. Lavender shade patch off my paper is currently not completely dry. So let's observe with applying of dry paint on it, how it behaves. I'm going to take some and apply it on the part where it is still wet. You can see that it merges with the background, creating a watercolor bloom. Trying it with a differentiator as well. I'll try the same On the other part where it is completely dry and we see the brushstrokes retaining as is in the form that we have applied. Here. I'm going to show you some minimum techniques to add leaf or the branches just by pressing on belly of the brush, wet lot of paint in your brush. You can get this oval shapes from the brush itself. Putting half pressure, you can get the triangular shapes that depicts leaves. This technique is really helpful for lose painting of leaves or branches. Now let's go to Dry on dry. Here, my patch off the paper is completely dry. I'm going to take some Payne's gray and dab off the excess amount of paint on my brush on a tissue people. And here I'm going to apply it on this patch. You can see that paint is getting applied only on the curvature of my paper rather than the entire length. This is Dry on dry technique, wherein the paint is dry as well as the paint in your brush is very concentrated form. This is helpful when you're trying to add the final details to your painting. The first layer of rainfall that is visible, or the details on the leaves. Let's observe how using a palette knife, we can add the Foreground ring. Here I have two pallets. You can use any palette knife that you have. Make sure it has a straight line at at least one of its sides. This is how I'm going to be holding it. Let me try with showing In Watercolour itself. I'm going to dip it into my mix and put a little bit of pressure. This is the way I'm holding. And just with one swift motion, I'm going to bring it down to get the desired straight line that we are looking for. I observed that also with just the tip, I'm able to draw the entire line. Make sure you always hold it in the straight line. If there is any angle, there is a chance of paints getting out of our desired state. Let's practice this one's with White gouache as well. I have squeezed out some paint on my palette. Mixing some water to get the required consistency for the rain makes sure that it is opaque enough to be visible even when it is completely dry. This consistency works well for me. So once it is done, I'm going to take the palette knife and use my brush to quoted it, my brush with the same swift motion that we practiced. I'm going to add rain. You can test it out with the other palette brushes that you have and observe which works best for you. You can also use any other credit cards, they expired ones for the same purpose. I'm going to take some of the paint from my brush directly onto the credit card and pull it across. This way you can control the length of the rain as well as the thickness of it. Let me also show how the type of a Liner brush I'm going to apply. Let's do a quick recap. We saw how Wet on Dry works when the paper is not completely dry and when the paper is dry. Load how to paint loose leaves as well. Along with the branch. We also saw how Dry on dry works. We use different tools to depict the rainfall. Be it a credit card, a palette knife, or even our Liner brush. This is all for the techniques class. Now, let's get started with painting our class project 7. Project 1 - Rainy day | Background wash: Here I have taped on the paper using a Masking tape. And I'm going to apply water onto the people for our wet-on-wet technique. I'm taking a flat brush for that purpose, you can use any other brush of your choice. I'm going to apply approx, three to four layers of water onto it, making sure that there are no puddles of water on the people. In order to retain the paper with water for a longer duration of time. I would highly recommend to do a full coats of water on the people and wait until there is a thin, shiny surface of water visible on your paper surface. Now for the first wash, I'm starting by taking some Payne's gray on my palette. I'm using size eight round brush for the wash. Here. I'm going to apply randomly from bottom left of my people. As it is a rainy-day scene, I want the main focus of mine painting to be on the rainfall. Hence, my background is going to be of a lighter shade and completely blurred from the Painting perspective. Now, I'm taking some cobalt turquoise onto my palette, mixing it with a tenth of Payne's gray and applying it on the top portion of my people. You're welcome to choose any other colors of your choice. In order to make the mixing process easy, I'm going to tilt the paper with the help of my left hand. I'm keeping this paper in an angle so that water can flow on the people. Mix my paints together and form a beautiful background. For over Painting. I'm going to keep some whitespace here on the top right corner. This is so that when I come back to add, my foreground leaves, it will be popping up easily and vibrant on the paper. Now I'm taking some more Payne's gray and adding it here in there. Please focus on the brush strokes that I'm trying to add here. Once the paper dries off, these strokes will be evidently visible. For sure. I'm trying to add some contrast with tonal values of the same sheets that are used so that the painting is not completely blind. I'm going to take the same mix and do some splattering. For this, I'm taking my brush with good amount of water or the paint mix and tapping it on the belly of my brush so that there are splatters on the paper. I'll continue with the same process, but now with pure water, there is no color in my brush. You can see how beautiful those ports are getting created on the people. This is one of the easiest textures I would say that you can create and use in any one of your rainy-day paintings. Now to start with adding of Rainfall, the paper is still wet. Take some water onto it and move it across on the people in a swift motion. Creating lines of rainfall and in one straight line creating an illusion of rainfall on the people. And I'm going to add one layer of rainfall here. We did come back later once the paper is dry. To add the Foreground part of frame. This is to depict some of the blurred lines of rainfall that are happening in distant. This can be completely random. Having correct amount of water in your brush matters a lot while doing this technique. If you do not have Liner brush, some of the alternatives that you can use here are credit cards or backoff your pen, or backoff your brush, or a round brush with very minimal amount of water in the brush. So now I'm very happy with how the background of rainfall has come up. I let the people completely dry and come back to paint the final layer of Rainfall 8. Project 1 - Rainy day | Foreground & Rainfall: Now the paper is completely dry. I'll squeeze out some fresh whitewash onto my people. I'm adding some water to create the dilute consistency that I would need for rainfall. So you can see there is a thin layer of paint coated on my palette knife. I'm good with this consistency, so I'll go ahead and start applying on my paper. You can also alter the length of these rain droplets by just adding limited amount of pressure on the palette knife. And by keeping it in an angle, you can continue to use the Liner brush or a round brush with sharp tip for this purpose, if you do not have a palette knife, I'm splattering some of the White gouache here using the same brush because they can be water droplets that are coming off by hitting a surface or dropping from any objects that are available. This looks good and I'm happy with how the entire background and the rainfall has turned out. Now to add with the other object, that is the branches of a tree, I'm going to mix some cadmium yellow with indigo. This forms of beautiful, vibrant green. And I'm going to add some leaves. I'm falling the same approach how I have covered in techniques class So just by dabbing the belly of my brush, I'm adding some textures that looks like leaf. Since it's a rainy-day painting. The leaves can be, leaves can be moving in any direction since it's a rainy-day painting. So it is completely okay for you to depict in your own imagination. Mixing some Payne's gray to the max and adding contrast onto the leaves as well. Taking some more indigo and adding to the mix to get a darker shade off the color. For splattering purpose, I'm using a round brush, the same Round Brush for splattering as well. This looks good. I'm happy with how the painting has turned out. It was a really quick and very relaxing one for me. I'm happy with how this has turned dark now, I will start by peeling off the masking tape. I wanted to show how to correct the peel off of Masking tape. If the paper starts to come off. In my first peel off, the paper is already stuck onto the Masking tape. And if I pull it further, it might take the paper. What I would do what I would do is stop it right there. When I see that there's paper coming off and start with the opposite edge of Masking tape. And slowly and slowly pull it off in the definite angle and make sure that the people stays back there. This is the paper that was coming off. I will slowly peel it off and make sure that the painting is not affected. This is our final outcome from our class project one. Make sure to post your works in the project section and see you in the next class. 9. Project 2 - Bloom in rain | Background wash: Let's start over next class project. For this, I'm going to have a basic sketch drawn. I have given the reference image on the side so that you can refer to it while sketching it out. This is going to be my main branch. This is a very freehand drawing like again, see, if you want very particular drawing, you can always refer to those reference image given going to take a kneadable eraser and remove excess graphite from the paper. This is an optional step, but it is always good to remove the darker marks from the Pencil. I'm good with this. So now I'll start by applying water onto the entire people. Sketch will really help us to understand where to put the concentrated pigment and well, to leave some blank spaces while painting. I'm going to apply good amount of water on the paper since it is going to be a wet-on-wet technique. And I want my paper to retain water for a longer period of time. I squeezed out some greenish amber on my paper. So I'm going to take that first and start by applying it. I'm applying a randomly here in there, and also leaving some whitespaces on the people. This can differ from my people to yours. According to my sketch where I have the law flower, I'm going to leave a good amount of whitespace there and not fill it with green. I'm working with different tonal values here on the paper Once I'm happy with the Background wash, I'm going to do splattering with the same color. Taking some more water on the brush while I still have pigment and using it for splattering. Next, I'm going to splatter pure water on the people without any pigment. Like we have seen them in the techniques class. You can see how beautifully water disperses the color beneath it and forms this beautiful blooms. Dabbing off the brush so that there are no clear visible lines when the paper is completely dry. When the paper is semi dry, like how we had learned in techniques class. I'm going to take Indian yellow and apply it here. This will be some of the blurred or the background florals that might be available. I'm going to apply it at random places as per the reference image. Switching to my small size brush and doing the same that greenish amber for leaves and branches. I'm not going to apply any Background rainfall here because the droplets which are available that will do the work for me. I'm going to let it completely dry and come back to paint the foreground object as well as Foreground rain 10. Project 2 - Bloom in rain | Foreground bloom: Now it's completely dry. You can see that it has dried off with the Bloom. We can fix it while applying the rainfall. To start the painting of the branch and the leaves, I'm going to take some paint in my brush. This is cadmium yellow medium with a small size brush of size four. I'm going to paint the flower. And painting just one side of the petals because On the other side, I'm going to show a contrast with a different color. With limited amount of water on my brush, I'm going to fill up the other side of petal as well. Mixing Indian yellow back to the cadmium yellow medium mix. And I'm going to apply it on the other side of the petals. This will create a beautiful contrast and difference in tonal values. Once it completely dries off. Going to take greenish umber on my brush. All this I'm doing with just my size four brush. And I'm going to start painting the branch. I'm applying green right now because the cadmium, because the petals part is still wet. So Brene will merge beautifully with the petals and get the desired effect that we need. For adding leaves. I'm going to add a little bit of more pressure on the belly of my brush and drag it along. You can also use a bigger size brush for painting the bigger leaves. For darker shade of leaves. I'm going to take some indigo and mix it with cadmium yellow medium. After adding the leaf, I'm going to take a damp brush and lift off the excess off paint from one side of it. This is the defect, a reflection or a highlight on the leaf that is formed by rain droplets on the leaf. I'm going to continue apply leaves on the people. As per my reference. I'm not following the reference entirely. I made sure to add different tonal values in the leaves with the help of either lifting off the excess of paint or by mixing more amount of cadmium red yellow to it. Now with the Liner brush, I will start to add highlights. Let me, let me activate my White gouache with some water here. Now we type of a Liner brush. I'm going to add the highlight on to branch. Usually in a rainy-day scene, we will see a lot of highlights on the people when the foreground object is in our main focus. That is because there is always a coating of water on the object. And when viewed from an angle urban captured in a reference, or when captured in a picture, it tends to live a highlight on its borders. So we're trying to show the same here. I'll also continue that on some of the leaves. The scene Liner brush, I'm going to show some water droplets coming out of the leaves. This can be of various sizes and dimension. If you do not have a Liner brush, you can do the same with any white gel pen 11. Project 2 Bloom in rain | Rainfall: Now I'll get started with adding the rain. I'm going to take my palette knife and this is the direction in which my rainfall will be. It'll not be straight like how it was in our class project one. Okay. Let me squeeze out some fresh gouache here. I'll bring it to the consistency that is required by adding good amount of water onto it. Once I have the desired consistency, I'm going to take the paint, the white quash on my palette knife, and start by applying it in this direction. This is a crisscross rain. We are going to have rainfall from the sides. Some of the rain droplets here and my becoming bouncing off of any other plant which is above this. Or it can also be falling off the roof. It can be anything. We just know that the rain droplets here coming from two different directions. With the Liner brush, I'm going to add the remaining of the rainfall. I'm going to take green in my liner brush and move it along with the white droplets that we have added. It is all part of the detailing of a painting. So you can skip this step and just continue to have divide droplets. I'm happy with how this has turned out. So I'll just below of the deep. Hopefully this will not dare up like how we did in the last class project. Oops, okay, it happens again. So I'll just stop right there where the paper is coming off and start with the opposite direction. Slowly, I peel it off making sure that the people doesn't come off. And in the intersection, I'm going to go very slow and peel it off. Yeah. I have managed to not tear off my people and coincidentally does happen to both of my projects. So all you have to know is how to manage it when it starts to tear off. Okay? Hope you had a lot of fern and learned a lot from this class project as well. I hope to see your entries and projects and resources section. Thanks for joining and see you in the conclusion. 12. Thank you for joining: Thanks to everyone for joining the class. I hope you had a great learning session. I for sure had amazing time Keurig in this entire experience for you. Make sure to post your works in the Projects and Resources section. Ceiling the next class where I'll come a bit something new and exciting