For this level of detail, streams of water are going to be easier to portray. Droplets require more detail to be realistic than the rest of the drawing is able to support. I think at this level they look more like lumps, unfortunately.

I think if you hadn’t explicitly asked me to consider whether she looks wet, I may not have questioned it. Your question triggered the thought, “what else does it look like”, so now I can’t unsee the blisters.

I just asked my husband to tell me what he sees and his reply was, “uuh… woman in the rain?” So without any prompting it passes as water.

Looks like boils or pimples but I can see what you’re trying to do. You’ve got the sense of how water tends to lighten whats under it, and how theres shadows around the droplets to give it definition.

Positioning and refinement of the shine on droplets is important I’d say. Theres almost always a clearly visible shine on droplets like that. Water also reflects the background quite a bit so I would expect these particular droplets to have harsh shadows due to the hair and background being dark/black.

Also water/rain doesn’t really clump in distinct bubbles unless its on a still flat surface. It tends to be one big round shape… so the clumps of water on the bottom right look off. That amount of water is more likely to disturb the surface tension of the droplets and run down her chin in a curved line, maybe even begin the process of falling from her.

Her hair being wet also makes me feel like there should be more water running down her face from the scalp. Stray hairs would stick to her face though you do have a bit of this here, honestly hair is pretty good… Water around her eyebrows would get a bit absorbed into the hairs… Eyelashes are pretty good at maintaining beads of water…

Articulating how water works into words is hard… I would suggest getting a spray bottle and spritzing your arm with some water and taking pictures in different lighting to get a sense of how it works. Maybe even add a bit of skin safe water based dye to see if different colours help you see the shadows and reflections more clearly.

She looks lime she wasn’t vaccinated

If the droplets were more vertically oblong like they were running down her face it would look a lot gooderly.

I think you have most of the elements in place and it looks pretty good already.

If you want advice on how you could improve it… I just sketched this, each drop should have lighting similar to this. Sharp bright white reflection of where the light is hitting it at the top, directly under that, (still at the top) you have a subtle blurry shadow. At the bottom you have a blurry subtle highlight, then under you have the shadow being cast by the drop.

All of those elements will look different depending on the size/shape/angle of the drop, angle of the lighting, whether a shadow would block lighting etc.

Look at lots of reference images to compare different conditions to get an idea of how the light in the drops behaves :)

To me it sits somewhere between water droplets and a disease. I don’t have the kind of expertise to tell what exactly makes it wrong, but maybe try messing with shading inside the droplet.

I think the biggest thing I notice is that there are adjacent droplets that are touching, that you’ve painted as two separate drops/spheres.

But when water drops touch in real life they combine because of the surface tension, so any two drops that are touching shouldn’t exist but instead just be one bigger droplet.

You have gotten a lot of good feedback. I think you did great work with the hair, it really conveys wet hair.

Your question made me think about what I look like when I am drenched from the rain or right after coming out of a shower. Usually, there aren’t many visible droplets, if any, it is mostly shine, especially if there’s light on your face. If you’re somewhere dry while your hair is still dripping, you’ll see more of the hair runoff rather than droplets across the face. And if you are still in the rain then it would be water flowing down and hanging from hair (any kind), nose and chin.

Do you use a reference? This is ai (fast search) but it shows how I would assume she would look like:

Good luck! You did a good job overall! Water is very hard to get right!

No, sorry. Looks like raised skin bumps.

They look like bumps or blemishes on her face, mostly. This is due to the lighting. They have highlights but not internal illumination, and the shadows are all around the droplets, not reflecting the shadows of her face.

Handy guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/kj9yut/guide_to_draw_water_droplet/#lightbox

Throwing in my incompetent 2 cents: the hair looks good and helps. But for the drops themselves, maybe there’s too many, they’re too unaligned with gravity, and too spherical/uniform. I’m not inclined to do an acne commercial demo right now, but I feel like not much water forms in droplets before skin gets moistened and breaks the beading ability. Sorta like you need more subtle streaks and fewer droplets. The light refraction should also be asymmetrical. I guess lighter on the bottoms, but not sure

But as discussed many times before, your ability is far above what I possess so this is all meant as constructive postulations. I really enjoy the overall coloring and shading

It looks to me like there are too many droplets.

Yes and no. The highlights are good, particularly in the hair, lips, and nose. But only some of the droplets are shaped like they are being pulled down by gravity and have highlights, while most are just kinda blotchy.

Too many droplets, especially on near verticals. There there should be very few, running down. Sides of nose, front of cheek, should be mostly clean. Just gleaming from being drenched in a film of water if that’s the case, but nothing also works. A single running droplet with path lightly traced on the side of the nose will do the trick of conveing wetness instead of the multiple droplets there.

The upper lip and chin look good, that’s where I expected to see droplets accumulated. Above the brow and under the eye also.

For extra challenge: a big droplet forming on the tip of the nose. Let’s see if you can make it not look gross 😄