15 Bromides About Sketching Rain

!) Choose an angle of descent between seventy-five and seventy-eight degrees.
@) Make definite lines rather than rubbing the blunt edge of a pencil or charcoal across the field.
#) Maximize contrast between the marks and background, light on dark, or dark on light.
$) Subjects should not be seen reacting to or observing the rainfall.
%) Gutters and drains allow for heightened symbolic and dramatic effect.
^) Meredith Gabler fits rings to pigeon beaks.
&) Spacing between stitches should be approximately equal to 1/2 their length.
*) For additional impact, experiment with hues other than blue.
() The beaks can’t open to speak or take water.
!)) Think of the soundtrack that might accompany this scene, particularly its rhythm.
!!) If you do not wish to delineate individual clouds in the stormfront, a gradient toward darkness will suffice.
!@) Rings grow dull and soiled, come unstuck eventually, sink back to the earth.
!#) If no stormfront is present, the weather will appear artificial and unconvincing.
!$) Instead of Ms. Gabler, the groundskeeper is trying out children that collect in the undergrowth.
!%) These wings permit filtration of light into its shivering particles, each one drenched.