# Paint rainy-night reflections in Aquarell: vertical colour on wet pavement
Language: en
Canonical: [Paint rainy-night reflections in Aquarell: vertical colour on wet pavement]()
中文：[中文 HTML]()
English: [English HTML]()
Published: 2026-10-23T00:00:00+08:00
Modified: 2026-10-23T10:34:08+08:00
Author: Bison
Start from three lights and organise vertical reflections, horizontal breaks and near-to-far perspective on wet pavement without making the whole road a mirror.
English translation of the [Chinese original](), translated on 2026-10-23. The article body uses automated translation; app descriptions, historical reading notes and video subtitles receive separate editorial checks. Original publication dates, attribution, code and version notes are retained.
A road after rain is not a perfectly flat mirror. Light extends roughly vertically but is broken into short sections by uneven ground and puddle edges. This exercise uses only three distant lamps, establishing their correspondence with vertical color bands and breaking those bands with horizontal strokes. The focus is the link between reflection and source, and a rhythm of smaller marks far away and larger marks nearby.
## Divide sky and road with the horizon
Create a 1400×1000-pixel landscape canvas and place the distant buildings' baseline about 430 pixels from the top. Use dark blue-gray above and a slightly purplish dark gray for the road below. You do not need specific lane markings; leave a lighter area through the middle leading into the distance. Keep the horizon steady, avoiding a large difference in height between the sides that creates an unintended tilt.
Prepare three light colors: warm orange, cool cyan-blue, and a little warm white. Place the lamps at the middle-left, just right of center, and on the right, with different sizes. Use separate layers for lights, reflections, and foreground dark strokes so they are easy to compare. You do not need to complete the street's buildings first; a few dark rectangles are enough to establish the setting.
## Paint the lamps before setting the reflection axes
With a small brush, paint three distant light shapes, each about 25 to 50 pixels wide and 20 to 40 pixels high. Lamps are not isolated stars: place them inside a darker building shape or connect a very short dark pole below. Put the brightest lamp just right of center and make the other two dimmer. Three equally large, equally white lights would leave the picture without a focus.
Imagine an axis running downward from each lamp, with its reflection extending around that axis rather than drifting beneath another lamp. Draw three short pale marks to confirm the correspondence. Real reflections depend on viewpoint and surface conditions. This simplified exercise retains only an approximate vertical connection and is not an exact optical simulation.
## Lay in color bands of different widths
On the reflection layer, start the warm-orange reflection with a brush about 50 to 80 pixels wide at 40% to 60% opacity. Keep the band narrow and short near the horizon, gradually widening it toward the foreground, perhaps from about 20 pixels to 100 pixels. Do not connect it all the way down in one stroke; leave several dark gaps. Apply the same logic to a cyan-blue reflection on the other side, but make it slightly shorter and less bright.
Next, add a little brighter color through the center of each band, at about half the original band's width. The bright line should shift slightly from side to side instead of remaining equally straight from top to bottom. Near the bottom, widen one or two strokes horizontally; in the distance, retain only fine fragments. At the end of this pass, light should appear to extend toward us across the road. You do not yet need many raindrops.
## Break up reflections with dark horizontal strokes
Switch to the foreground dark-stroke layer and choose a dark gray close to the road color. Draw groups of short horizontal strokes across the light bands. Make distant lines thin and closely spaced, and nearby lines wider and farther apart. For example, space distant strokes about 10 to 20 pixels apart and nearby ones 50 to 80 pixels apart. Do not interrupt every band neatly at the same height, or it will resemble ruled paper.
Some dark strokes cut completely across a band; others brush only one side, leaving a bright break. Keep their overall direction near horizontal, allowing slight slopes without scattering diagonal lines everywhere. Wet-road texture depends on orderly short horizontal variations, not random noise. If the edges are too hard, reduce the dark-stroke layer's opacity instead of blurring the entire reflection.
## Add a few foreground details for a wet surface
Add two or three fine, short warm-white highlights in the darkest foreground, near the main lamp's reflection. They can be about 40 to 90 pixels long and only a few pixels wide. Do not distribute white evenly across the road: the wet effect comes from locally clear reflections on a dark base. If you want rain streaks, add only a few very faint diagonals in the upper half.
Check whether the building-road contact area is too bright. A glowing line across the entire horizon cuts the space apart. Darken parts of it again and keep brightness only near the lamps. For the hierarchy of warm and cool colors, see [Orange and blue-cloth exercise](), likewise letting one color lead while the other supports it.
## Use a small puddle to distinguish two surfaces
Leave a flat, irregular puddle on one side of the foreground and make one section of its reflection more continuous than the surroundings. Keep the puddle's edges dark, with only one or two relatively orderly bright strokes inside. Use more broken short lines on the rough road around it. The same lamp then reflects with different degrees of continuity on two surfaces, adding variety to the wet road. Do not outline the puddle as a closed bright ellipse or add a ring of ripples. It reads mainly through its more continuous reflection and darker surroundings. If it attracts too much attention, reduce its size or brightness so the main lamp reflection retains the central role.
## Check that every reflection has a source
Zoom out and compare each of the three lamps with its reflection. Do the colors correspond, do the axes connect roughly, and does the brightest lamp have the most conspicuous reflection? Then check whether the foreground is broader and looser than the distance. If the reflections become neon strips of equal length, vary the breaks and widths before adding more colors.
**Why does it look like a glass facade rather than a road?** The reflections are commonly too straight or complete, or the upper and lower halves are almost perfectly symmetrical. Add horizontal breaks, widen nearby reflections, and reduce clear upside-down building outlines. A road exercise does not require a copy of the entire street scene.
**Can one-click blur create a rainy night?** Blur only softens edges; it cannot establish correspondence between lamps and reflections. This exercise organizes the picture manually through color bands and breaks, without requiring a particular filter. Continue with [Warm light in a night window]() to compare a wall's glow with a road's reflection.
## Sources and applicable version
Based on [Aquarell App Store description]()brush, layer, and color features, checked on October 23, 2026, against public version 1.0.5. These are manual painting exercises with suggested dimensions, and the interface may change between versions.