How to Oil Paint Rain

Painting landscapes with oil takes time and lots of practice to learn. Learning how to paint rain is no exception. Painting a rain-scape requires knowledge of painting one wet layer over another as well as blending colors while taking care to capture the landscape's tones and shading. Practice this technique on a spare canvas before applying it to your painting.

Things You'll Need

• Oil painting brush appropriate for your project
• Paint in a tone that coordinates with your landscape
• A painted, but wet, landscape

Instructions

1. Choose your paint colors. The rain should match the landscape, while also depicting the low light and gloom of a rainstorm. These colors should also coordinate with the tones of the rest of the picture. For example, gray rain streaks on a colorful garden landscape will look out of place. However, a white toned oil paint blended with the wet paint of the flowers would be appropriate.

2. Pick a brush that matches the type of rain you want to paint. For example, you can't make large close-ups of droplets with a fine round sable brush --- this type of brush is best used for depicting a fine rainy foreground. You can use a filbert hog bristle brush to depict a heavy rainstorm. Try using a sable bristled round, fine brushes or even synthetic round flat fine brush for capturing a simple rainy day picture.

3. Use short, light, but very thin strokes over the top of your landscape. Try not to blend the paint. Instead, just apply the rain paint color so that it looks like it is a part of the painting, not on top of it. Using the aforementioned strokes, slightly moving the wet paint of the landscape on the canvas. This will accomplish the effect you want.

4. Continue to streak the rain color slightly into and on top of the wet landscape until the picture is submerged in rain. Make all of your strokes in the same direction, and at an angle --- not a stiff vertical line: a slight angle is enough to simulate real rain.

5. Let your painting dry. Hang it and enjoy.