How to make and use realistic water drop brushes in Photoshop.

In digital imaging, there’s always a way.

All the rain drops in the pic above are fakes, courtesy of yours truly. I could have been more persnickity about it, but this was for a tutorital. I tried to figure this out last night, but there was a sticking point I couldn’t get past. After sleeping on it, I cracked it. I explain how to make the brushes, manipulate them, use them, and work with the results to achieve realism in the video below:

 

Here’s another example using a different background:

Some of the drops are overlapping, and I could easily correct that if I were making art, and not just doing a quick demo. The shots, incidentally, are from when I lived in China.

It’s too complicated to describe the process here, but you start off making one ore more brushes. I used three.

Above, on the left, I drew my own water drop based on the one I cut out of a picture. It’s an extra step that just makes things more personal, flexible, and traditional. For photomanipulations, I’d just use a photo, but for digital paintings, I’d wanna’ draw it myself so everything is done by hand.

A rivulet here and there ads authenticity.

You could achieve a similar effect my take a photo of water droplets over glass and layering it on top of an image in Photoshop, but this method allows much more control. I don’t know what, if anything I’ll use it for, but it really improved that photo of buildings I took in Vietnam, aesthetically speaking. I’m planning on doing really a lot more illustrative artwork in 2020, rather than other kinds of digital art, so I’d probably end up using this for some sort of splatters, and integrated into a digital painting.

~ Ends

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