How to Color Rain and Wet Streets With Colored Pencils

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Rain is the subject that makes colorists reach for the gray pencil and start scribbling — and that is exactly why most rain pages look like fog instead of weather. The problem is not technique. The problem is that rain has two parts most people skip: the falling water and the wet surface underneath it. Draw the rain streaks but forget the reflections, and the page looks flat. Draw the reflections but skip the streaks, and it looks like a puddle, not a storm.

The good news is that three moves carry the entire scene, and none of them require expensive supplies. Streaked highlights left as bare paper, vertical smear strokes for falling rain, and reflected light drawn onto the asphalt — with toned gray paper doing half the work for free. Here is how to build a rainy-day page that actually looks wet.

Grab your grays and a white gel pen — here is the step-by-step for coloring rain and wet streets that look like the real thing.

The Three Moves That Carry the Whole Scene

Move 1: Leave bare paper for your highlights. Before you lay down a single stroke, decide where your lightest highlights will go — streetlight reflections, raindrops catching light, the bright edge of a wet sign. Those areas stay untouched. Bare white paper is the brightest highlight you have, and once you cover it with pencil, you cannot get it back without an eraser that damages the tooth. Plan your highlights first, color around them.

Move 2: Vertical smear strokes for falling rain. Rain falls down, so your strokes go down. Use the side of a soft-core pencil (Prismacolor works beautifully here) and drag it downward with light pressure, smearing slightly as you go. The streak does not need to be uniform — rain is irregular, with gaps and heavier drops mixed in. Layer 3-4 light strokes over each other rather than one heavy pass. The wax in soft cores smears naturally, which is exactly the texture falling rain needs.

Move 3: Reflected light on the asphalt. This is the move that makes a street look wet instead of gray. After you base-coat the street with your asphalt gray, go back and add reflected color — the warm yellow of a streetlight, the red of a neon sign, the blue of a window — as vertical streaks running downward from the light source. Wet surfaces reflect upward-pointing light downward. Draw those reflections as faint, vertical smears and the pavement reads wet instantly.

The Supplies That Make Rain Easier

Prismacolor Premier Soft Core Pencils 72-Count — The Gray-Family Workhorse

Prismacolor Premier 72-Count runs about $60 and it is the set I reach for first on any rain or storm page. The reason is the gray spread. You get six to eight cool grays plus blue-grays that are exactly what storm skies and wet asphalt demand, and the soft wax cores smear into rain streaks in a single pass. No other set at this price gives you that many usable grays.

The softness is both the strength and the weakness. The cores are soft enough to blend with a light touch, but they snap tips on fine detail work — umbrella ribs, window frames, the thin lines of a raindrop trail. Use a harder pencil (see Polychromos below) for the detail work and the Prismacolors for the big smear strokes.

My take: The gray-family workhorse. If you color rainy or moody pages, the Prismacolor 72 is your primary set.

Sakura Gelly Roll Retractable Gel Pens 10-Pack — The Rain-Streak Highlighter

Sakura Gelly Roll Retractable Gel Pens run about $18 for a 10-pack with white, gold, and silver. These are the pens that draw raindrops, reflected window light, and the bright edge of a wet street sign over your finished pencil layers. White is the one you will use most — a few well-placed white gel dots on a dark rain streak look like individual drops catching light.

The gotcha: gel pens skip over heavy wax bloom. If you burnish your pencil layers hard, the wax rises to the surface and the gel pen slides off. Lift your shine highlights with the gel pen before you burnish, not after.

My take: The cheapest supply on this list and the one that does the most for rain pages. A $18 gel pen pack transforms a flat gray page into a wet, glowing scene.

Strathmore 400 Series Toned Gray Pad 9×12 — The Storm-Sky Shortcut

Strathmore 400 Series Toned Gray is about $10 for a pad, and it is the shortcut that does half the work for free. The paper starts gray — a mid-tone that is already the dim half of a rainstorm scene. You add your darks with pencil and your lights with white gel pen, and the paper itself handles the middle gray that would otherwise take you three layers to build.

The honest limitation: the 80-pound weight buckles under heavy marker overlays, so stick to dry pencil on this paper. If you are a marker colorist, use a heavier stock. For pencil-only rain pages, the toned gray is a genuine time-saver.

My take: The best $10 you can spend if you color moody or rainy scenes. The paper does the gray work so you can focus on the light and the dark.

Twilight Garden Coloring Book (Maria Trolle) — The Moody Practice Book

Twilight Garden by Maria Trolle is about $18 and it is the practice book I recommend for learning the light-on-dark mindset that rain scenes demand. The pages are dark florals and moonlit gardens — not rain specifically, but the skill of drawing light against a dark base is the same skill you need for rain. The intricate borders mean this is not a one-sitting book, which is good: you want to practice these techniques across multiple pages.

My take: The best moody-practice book for colorists learning to make light pop against dark backgrounds. Pair it with the toned gray paper for instant results.

Faber-Castell Polychromos Pencils 24-Count — For Crisp Edge Work

Faber-Castell Polychromos 24-Count runs about $40-60 and it is the complement to your Prismacolor set, not a replacement. The oil-based cores hold a needle point through dozens of rain-streak strokes without the smearing wax cores cause. Use these for the detail work — umbrella ribs, window frames, the thin outlines of individual raindrops — where Prismacolor tips would snap.

The limitation is color count. A 24-count limits your gray options, so it pairs with, not replaces, a full Prismacolor set. You use the Polychromos for edges and the Prismacolors for the big smear work.

My take: The detail-work upgrade. Not necessary for beginners, but once you start drawing rain streaks and fine reflections, the point retention is worth the money.

Common Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

Drawing rain as gray scribbles. Rain is directional — it falls down. Use vertical strokes, not circular ones. If your rain looks like fog, you are probably using too much pressure and not enough direction.

Forgetting reflections entirely. A wet street without reflections is just a gray street. The reflections — streetlights, signs, windows — are what make it read as wet. Add them as faint vertical streaks below each light source.

Using one gray for everything. Storms have warm grays and cool grays. Sky grays trend blue. Asphalt grays trend neutral. Building grays trend warm. Use at least three grays or your page will look like a photocopy.

Burnishing before you highlight. If you burnish your pencil layers hard, the wax bloom will repel gel pen ink. Add your white gel highlights before you burnish, or use a workable fixative between layers.

The Budget Setup That Still Works

If you are starting from scratch and want to try rain coloring without spending $100: get the Strathmore Toned Gray pad ($10), a basic gray pencil set ($15-20), and a single white gel pen ($3). That is $28-33 for a complete rain-coloring setup. The toned paper does the mid-tone work, the pencils handle the darks, and the white gel pen does the highlights. You can produce genuinely good rain pages with that setup.

Keep reading: check out our coloring technique guides and art supply reviews for more colored pencil tips.

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