Unless one have been living underground, weather plays a part in everybody’s daily lives.

 

In illustrations, weather is not only a part of the setting, but can also enhance the mood and overall image..

 

We’ll talk about the elements of weather as well as how to draw each and every one of them. If there’s any brush from Assets I use, I’ll also include the link.

 

Also, we’re going to learn how to blend preexisting character to the weather.

 

There's a video version of this tutorial. If that's what you prefer, check it out!

Weather and Mood

In general, we can divide normal weather into four types: sunny, cloudy, rainy and snowy. Followed by severe weather like storm and blizzard.

 

For the sake of drawing, I prefer to group the weather based on the mood: bright, murky and dark.

*Top to Bottom: Bright, Murky and Dark.

Bright weather means clear sky, if there’s cloud it usually in tune with the sky’s colors instead of murky. Brilliant might be a fitting word for this weather. During the day the sky is bright blue and during the night, the sky is clear enough to see moon and stars.

 

Murky weather pretty much means low in saturation.

 

Dark weather means low in both brightness and environment visibility. The saturation depends on the intensity you want.

Rain can happen on sunny day, severe weather like storm can be murky instead of dark.

 

That’s why decide on the mood first, the weather can be adjusted to support the overall image we want to make.

Sky and Cloud

Sky, also known as “heavens” in some languages, can be painted in all kinds of colors.

 

There are colors that commonly used for sky in different time of day: bright shades of blue for day, red + orange for dawn/dusk and dark blue+black for night.

 

Almost any color goes, except for green.

Depending on the weather, white and gray are possible because of the clouds.

When the sky is bright blue, the color of the objects can stay as they are, no need to alter it.

 

When the color of the sky changes from blue into another color, the objects will share the colors of the sky. For example, during dusk with red sky, the clouds would look redder.

Cloud comes in varying shape, spread and density.

More than just a weather element, cloud can be arranged to highlight or divert viewer’s attention.

 

Here there are three elements: sky, cloud and silhouette (object). The focus of the picture on the left isn’t clear. The main focus of the middle one is the object. The main focus of the right one is the clouds.

There are excellent cloud brushes in Clip Studio Assets. I recommend this brush set.

Using the brushes above, it’s possible to paint clouds using just one color by adjusting the pen pressure as we draw to control the opacity.

 

For multiple colored clouds:

1. Paint the clouds using the brightest color available.

2. Create a new layer and clip. Change the Blending Mode to Color Dodge. Paint the brightest part of the cloud.

3. Create another layer and clip. Change the Blending Mode to Color Burn. Using the darkest color of the sky, paint the “shadowed” part.

Whirling clouds or tornado can also be drawn using the cloud brushes.

 

1. Prepare the background and draw the tornado guideline on separate layer.

2. Paint the tornado part in white. The layers created after this will all be clipped to this layer.

3. Create a new layer, paint it with color a bit darker than the sky.

4. Create a new layer, paint it with a color darker than the previous one.

5. Another new layer, another darker color. At this stage the shape of the tornado is obvious enough, hide the guideline layer.

6. Create a new layer. Using nearby colors, give spinning effect to the tornado.

7. Optional, use a darker color to make the shape of the tornado clearer.

I added murky clouds from earlier section to the background, and voila!

Wind and Heat

Wind is invisible, so we can only show its existence through other elements or items present in the illustration.

 

Non-weather related elements like leaves, hair, clothing are those commonly affected by wind. Weather related elements would be rain and snow. In some cases, wind is depicted using lines.

Wind strength can vary. It’s something to be decided before we start drawing.

Like the wind, heat is invisible. It’s usually depicted with melting ice and sweat.

Sweltering heat can be visualized with heat distortion. You can create weather related heat distortion using Filter > Distort > Zig Zag.

Angle is self-explanatory. “Wave Height” determines how distorted the picture would be, while the higher the “Number of Waves” the more curves you get.

 

Here's a quick result:

Rain

Rain often only visible when there’s a light source and contrasting background. This holds true in both day and night. Color the rain in the brightest light available in the illustration, sometimes lowering the opacity the further it is from the light source.

1. Draw the rain in a flash by using Figure Tool > Stream > Rain. I don’t bother changing the settings at first and just use it on the illustration.

2. After the rain layer is created, use Object tool (hotkey O) and change the setting according to your need while being able to see the result of the change live.

Here's a quick rundown of the options:

 

• Main color is the color of the rain. There can be only 1 color per rain layer.

• Angle is self-explanatory. For heavy rain without strong wind, keep the angle at -90. If there’s wind, adjust the angle as needed. Adjusting the red line also changes the angle.

• Gap of line means how far each raindrop from each other. The smaller the gap the more tightly packed it is.

• Grouping... I don’t use it since it didn’t affect the result much.

• Length determines how long the raindrop is. Shorter raindrop is good for drizzle, while longer works well for heavier rain.

• Gap from reference determines how far the raindrop strays from the shape we made.

• Brush size determines the thickness of each raindrop.

• Brush shape can be changed to fit the brush style we use for the illustration. Personally, I prefer Airbrush.

 

Here's the result:

The main problem of the steps above is it’s hard to draw heavy rain in one go. Copying the rain layer and adjust the settings is one solution. The other solution is to draw the rain manually:

 

1. The droplets can be drawn using Spray Airbrush. It works great for evenly sized droplets. I prefer to use my own Snow Brush for size variance.

2. Use Filter>Blur>Motion Blur.

And done!

In black and white illustration, draw the raindrops in white against dark backgrounds and in black against light background.

Not only by drawing the falling raindrops, drawing rainwater dripping from objects can also tell the viewer how heavy the rain is.

 

Water droplets bounced back after the rain hit a surface, ripples and running droplets on glass window can also inform the rain intensity.

Not only drawing the rain in straight lines, drawing the raindrops in round droplets can give the illustration “time has stopped” feel. Mixing both types is also a good idea.

Rainbow can appear after a sun shower. Fun fact about rainbows, you can only see a rainbow if the sun is behind you.

Snow

Snow comprised of a bunch of snowflakes, making it look powdery at the edges. In some art styles, though, falling snow are drawn as white round object. Usually depicted as snowfall or as lumps on surfaces.

 

It can be drawn and painted in a way to make it look soft.

 

1. Prepare the object.

2. Paint the powdery snow with “Running Color Spray” Airbrush. If you prefer lumpy snow, skip this step.

 

3. Paint the solid snow with Soft Watercolor brush.

4. Create another layer. Still using Soft watercolor brush, paint the shadow. To make the shadow’s edges crisper, I used Hard Eraser.

For snowfall, I made my own brush. It’s available on Assets in a set with snowflake brushes.

1. Prepare the background. I made it blurry because the snow is the main focus.

2. Draw the front-most snow.

3. Copy the snow layer and use Gaussian Blur to give the snow glowing effect. Merge the snow layers into one.

4. Draw smaller snow on a new layer.

5. Draw the smallest snow on another new layer. Use Gaussian Blur without copying the layer first. The smallest snow is meant to be a part of the background.

Blizzard can be drawn easily with the help of Motion Blur. The steps are similar to manual rain from previous section.

 

1. Prepare the snow. Preferably quite a lot for more dramatic effect.

2. Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. Compared to heavy rain, the strength is reduced to give volume to the snow.

And done!

Like the rain, black and white snowfall is simple. On background other than white, draw the snow in white. On white background, give the snow black outline. You can use Layer Property > Border Effect for automatic outline.

Individual snowflakes are usually tiny and not visible to naked eye, but it has beautiful hexagonal shapes you might want to draw for aesthetic reasons.

 

(These snowflakes are a part of my Snowflake brushes linked above)

Ice

Ice usually drawn clear and transparent. To give an icy look, it’s usually colored in white or shades of blue.

 

1. Draw the outline.

2. Draw the details. If you’re used to draw debris, the ice details were drawn in a similar way. I made sure there’s no gap in the middle of the line.

3. Create a new layer beneath the outline. Select a part and then use Soft Airbrush to paint each part in blue. Don’t completely fill it up. I prefer to stop at this stage.

4. Create a new layer above it and clip. Add white highlight near the detail lines.

5. (CONDITIONAL) For colored background, create a new layer above the layer from step 3 and clip it to that layer. It should be under the highlight layer.

 

6. Taking colors from the background, paint the ice with Soft Airbrush.

Thunder

When drawing thunder, the background should be dark enough. It consists of a main lightning with a very bright center and blurred colored border, smaller branches and back light. It’s usually in any color except green and black.

 

Thunder can go from cloud to cloud and cloud to ground.

 

I made my own Thunderbolt brushes, it’s available on Assets:

1. Draw the main thunderbolt. Draw the branches on separate layer.

 

2. For the shine effect, copy the main thunderbolt layer, use Gaussian blur. I copied the blurred thunderbolt layer a few times, merged them all and used Gaussian Blur again to achieve a brighter result.

The branches don’t emit light, so there’s no need to use the steps for it.

3. If it’s still not bright enough, copy the shine effect layer, paste it above the shine effect layer and change the Blending Mode to Add Glow. Lower the opacity if it’s too bright.

4. In thunderbolt’s color, paint a circle at the tip of the thunder using Soft Airbrush.

5. Using the same color and cloud brushes, highlight the clouds where the thunderbolt originates and the cloud that happen to be close to it.

Mist and Fog

Consider mist and fog as cloud on the ground, consist of tiny water droplets and limit visibility—with fog limiting more than mist. Because they’re murky, both often used to give eerie or mysterious feel.

 

If you want to add mist/fog to your illustration, try to separate the background into at least two layers, while three—front, mid and back—is ideal. This is to show the mist/fog intensity by lowering the visibility of the layers in different levels.

 

1. Prepare a cloudy background. For this sample, I separated the trees into four layers.

This is how it looks when all layers are visible:

2. Create a mist layer right above each tree layer. Paint the mist in white with Cloud brushes from Sky and Cloud section. It gives the mist nice cloudy texture.

3. Create a fog layer above each mist layer.

 

4. Fog is thicker than mist and have less cloudy texture, so I used Soft Airbrush. Since fog limits visibility way more than mist, the two tree layers at the back are not that visible.

Working with Weather

Combining weather and lightning can help us achieve certain impression in our works. The same facial expression and gesture can seem very different thanks to those factors.

 

To blend a previously colored character into the weather, create a new layer on top of the character’s layer (or folder) and clip it. Let’s call it “Blend” layer.

 

Pick the theme color in the picture, fill the Blend layer, then change the Blending Mode to Soft Light (to keep the original brightness), Hard Light with >50% Opacity (for more intense theme color) or Multiply (for darker result). Linear Burn works too.

Using Gradient Map is also an option. Change the Blending Mode to Soft Light or Hard Light to apply the colors.

That’s it about weather! I hope you find this tutorial useful~

 

See you again in other tutorials. Have fun drawing!