THE WET LOOK

Drops of water

I create a water droplet effect by using bevel and emboss effects on top of my brush strokes. To give the impression that the light is refracting through the droplet, I invert the direction of the light in the Bevel & Emboss editor.

The dark arts

To frame my subject, I like to let details and shadows merge with the dark background. This comes from a traditional painting technique known as chiaroscuro, where only the parts exposed to light are detailed, and shadows melt together. Because our eyes are drawn to detail and high contrast, this leads our eye to the important parts of the subject, such as her face.

Three stages to painting a wet visor realistically

1

Transparency Materials that are transparent tend to distort objects under them that are close to the edges, but in the centre the image stays pretty clear. I use this to my advantage to show clarity in her portrait, even if she’s wearing a big helmet.

2

Fog l blur out parts of the visor to give the impression of foggy condensation.

3

Droplets As condensation forms, areas of water become too heavy to support themselves and start to run off the glass.

Light and shade

Confidently defining and alternating between light and shadow shapes helps convey form and rhythm in your design. Because light travels in parallel lines, make sure that all the planes facing the same direction share the same greyscale values.

Rain effects

I try to illustrate the beam of light refracting through falling rain droplets. Because the rain is falling quickly and vertically, only a few droplets will pick up the light as a lighter streak passing through the beam. These effects can become noisy pretty quickly, so less is more.