Four Paintings on a Sunday

[sallybode]

Although I also own CorelPainter, when I want to relax and not have to concentrate on remembering where everything is (I am really under estimating that), I find ArtRAGE, just outrageously fun.

These four are done from photographs, each accomplished in under two hours, virtually every pixel however is my work though I did leave some unsmudged in the dog one, but it was painted with a fine brush so he doesn't look too painted, but he is.

Although ArtRAGE really isn't a pixel editor unless you want your pixel edits to look painted, (but what the hey, that is creative too), you can turn a photo into a painting far faster than in any other program I have tried. Whereas you can do this via automation in CorelPainter Essentials, if you have an worked in traditional media or even computer media, you may want to paint yourself, not watch your computer do it. What's the good of knowing how to draw otherwise if you don't use that abiltiy?

Like its big brother, PainterEssentials, has loads of tools, though pared down considerably to the full-fledged program. So I find ArtRAGE, having a limited number of tools, refreshing and most intuitive; it would seem you could not achieve that much varietion in effect, but you can change paper textures anytime you want, this does not effect what you have painted but rather has a distinct effect on how your current brush will blend with the existing painting. If you have a Wacom Intuos tablet, it is incredibly fun. As you can see, you can get a wide variety of effects just from working with a photograph. Which isn't to stop you painting from scratch, it is just what I felt like doing on a Sunday.

I did most of the painting on all the examples with the palette knife which smudges and smears color which already exists, there are three types: edge, flat and soft blend, which act much like the names suggest. There is also a paint brayer which allows one to block in even larger areas. There are tutorials on the ArtRAGE site which show you how to use tracing paper, but if you have painted before, who needs training wheels on your bicycle, you are going to save your imported picture in the .ptg format anyway, you won't ruin your imported .tiff or .jpeg. Quicker just to paint on your photography. But I've tried both ways, you can also have a reference picture pinned on the artboard.

It is available for both MAC and PC, there is both a free and a paid for version. But the paid for version is only $25.00. We are talking the deal of the decade, century, ok, including the last century too. The extra tools with the paid for version add tools for creating even more dimensional paint.

As ArtRAGE can output as well to .psd, with so many programs these days which support this format, you can do post edits in almost anything with your layers intact. It supports all the transparency types of Photoshop. On the chubby cherub and the bust of Caesar (taken at Merle Norman museum) I did some post edits in Painter, such as adding a wood cut effect to the background.

If you have a tablet, you realize that you can adjust your tip sizes very quickly without entering a dialog box, though you can do it that way too. But, like Xara, the more interactive the interface, the less you do in a dialogue box, the more productive the program really is. I am using the MAC version so I can't tell you how well it would work under Windows, but I was working with pictures from my 8.3 Canon Rebel camera which were the highest resolution I can shoot, without any appreciable lag in any tools, except the layers palette, wants to think a second before you can turn the eye icon on and off. If you are working in Windows, a fast processor, an upgraded video card and enough RAM should do the trick.

If you have ArtRAGE and haven't used it in a while, there is an upgraded version, so if you have bought it, you can upgrade for free. There is improvement in blending, there are stencils, which makes it easier to paint straight lines if you want to, on in my case, snowflakes. There are loads more things

Enjoy.