Embrace the rain!
The majority of landscape paintings that I see in both art society exhibitions and commercial galleries show some form of sunlight or ‘neutral’ weather. The rarest weather effect tends to be rain. In a country that has so much rain I find this strange, but my own output is no different, with a maximum content of around 10-per-cent rain paintings.
Perhaps because many people paint from photographs, their choice of reference material reflects the fact that they mostly choose to venture outside in non-rainy weather. The shame of it is that rainy days can produce beautiful paintings if we focus on the atmosphere of the scene. We learn a lot, too, because the colours, edges and tones in a rain scene will be very different from those in sunny subject matter and will require a different approach if we are to be successful in creating the right mood.
Painting outside in
