How to draw Waterdrops
- Helen Carter
- Nov 24
- 3 min read
Raindrops on roses and...ahem, sorry. I'm not about to burst into song (but I bet you could almost hear the music, eh?)
Where was I? Oh yes, raindrops. I’ve drawn a few over the years, and although they look complicated, they’re not at all, and the best part is you can make them all kinds of shapes and sizes and they still work. The secret to making them look realistic is understanding how the light behaves, because it is a bit different with a transparent object than with a solid one.
When adding drops to a bigger artwork, it is tempting to draw a circle and have the water sit like a ball on the surface, but in reality droplets should be many different shapes, and they rarely sit on the surface as a full sphere. Think of them more like water-balloons – they slump and spread, with a flat bottom that follows and moulds to the surface they’re on.
They can spread in strange ways too. Gravity will help create the classic teardrop shape, fatter at the bottom with a more pointed top, and when they run into each other you might find long thin ones or giant ones that dwarf those around it. Imperfections in the surface they're on can create notches and bulges and often you’ll find a string of smaller ones in a line.
If you study a close-up image of a waterdrop, the first thing you’ll notice is the internal highlight opposite to the main reflection. Highlights are formed by light waves bouncing off a solid object and into our eyes, but waterdrops are not exactly solid so a lot of light carries on to the inside of the droplet, hitting the back walls causing a second, much larger area of ‘internal illumination’ as those waves bounce around and back out into our eyes. This is why the surface under the droplet appears brighter than outside of it, because of all the reflected light. There is a cast shadow at the rear, like you’d see from a solid object, but this shadow is reflected on the front wall of the droplet, causing the darker forward edge. You might also see a gap in the cast shadow which is caused by light passing straight through. This will always be directly opposite the main highlight.
Let’s draw a simple waterdrop with 4 blue pencils.
1 – Draw the outline with the lightest blue.
2 – Decide which direction the light is coming from, then colour inside with the lightest blue, being sure to leave a shape for the main highlight. Gradually lighten your pressure as you colour to the opposite side, leaving a slim white crescent at the far edge. Add in the drop shadow along the outside edge opposite the main highlight, leaving a gap the same width as the highlight you created for the passthrough light.
3 – With the next darkest blue, blend on top of the previous layer, darkening the reflected cast shadow along the top, and the cast shadow along the bottom.
4 – Again, with the next darkest blue, blending the layers and deepening colour towards the top edge and drop shawdow creating a smooth gradient from dark to light.
5 – With the darkest blue, press firmly to create the top edge and blend slightly into the droplet in a crescent shape that surrounds the main highlight. Draw the underside of the droplet and colour against that edge within the drop shadow, easing off the pressure to create a gradient.
These steps will help you create droplets of almost any shape. Remember to decide on the direction of the light source first and be consistent with that across your drawing.
It’s important to embrace the randomness of shapes, spacing and size. Too many perfect drops with equal size and spacing looks less natural.
This little drawing shows the chaotic nature of real waterdrops on a leaf. They are all different and follow the same principles as the five step guide above.
Once you understand the shapes and the lighting, you can add waterdrops to pretty much anything. But for now, lets go back to the start of this blog, and finish with some Raindrops on Roses!
If you’d like to draw this one yourself with help from me, you can purchase my tutorial now.
This is fantastic information, thank you Helen. Can’t wait to try it out and will probably end up adding water drops to every drawing from now on!