![]() ![]() This painting required a lot of stippling. Xenorhipus, one of the more colourful jewel beetles for this commission. However, as the project went on, I realized that more than watercolour would be needed to bring out the richness of texture and metallic colour on some of these little animals. It can give the work the feel of old naturalist's studies. I planned to use watercolours for the beetles early on. The big advance in Studio Pro (also known as ArtRage 3) over the previous 2.5 version is, in my opinion, the amazingly realistic watercolours. In ArtRage you can control the paper or canvas surface (or blackboard, or sandpaper or.) and the digital paint handles differently on each type. I feel just like I'm dipping into my palette or brush box. These two palettes, tools and colours, mean everything to me as a classically-taught painter. On the right, the colours, allowing you to adjust tones and how metallic the paint appears. On the left, all your tools: oil and watercolour brushes, inking pens, pencils, erasers and host of other tools from technical to goofy. Screenshot showing the interface, from my original test of some of ArtRage Studio Pro's tools. Instead of drop-down menus, ArtRage includes all the important tools right on the screen in two quarter-circles in the corners: The main attraction for me with this program has always been the interface. Each one is relatively affordable (under $100 for the PC version, compared to several hundred for Photoshop). ![]() If you're not familiar, it's a digital painting program with versions available for PC, Mac, iPad and the iPhone. I've tried a number of digital painting programs, and by far my favourite is ArtRage. Adjustments and corrections to ensure scientific accuracy are much easier with digital media than with traditional paints. Since then, I sometimes find it more useful to paint digitally, especially for a project like these beetles. In my undergraduate degree, I worked mainly in oil paint. After that though, I have decisions to make. When tackling a new illustration subject for the first time, I like to begin with mechanical pencil and bristol paper. Today: Painting Bugs with ArtRage Studio Pro The result? My first series of scientific illustrations, instead of the off-kilter, surreal science paintings I'm known for. I’d also love to see a History, like in that said, as an artist’s toolbox ready to crack open and get started, ArtRage is close to perfect.Earlier this year I was commissioned by entomologist and insect photographer Morgan Jackson of Biodiversity in Focus to contribute to a soon-to-be-published, honest-to-gosh dead-tree book about jewel beetles in Ontario. And ArtRage uses a color wheel-type color picker, which sometimes makes it hard to find the right color you want: A sample palette would be a great addition to the eye dropper tool, although you could simple use a layer and delete it when you are done. If you are looking to make photo montage or use images in your paintings, you’ll need to first use a program like Paint.NET to prepare your images and import them. There’s no photo manipulation in ArtRage Studio Pro. You can open images to use as reference guides (and you can eye dropper select colors from these) or as a traceable image that’s placed on your canvas but doesn’t print or export with your image unless you want it to. These worked exactly like I expected, again intuitive and simple, yet useful. The features I really liked in ArtRage Studio Pro were the Layers, Trace, and Ref. Once you get the hang of the elegant yet unusual UI, it’s intuitive, and surprisingly ergonomic: Everything you need to paint is within a small, easy to find place. Unlike PD Artist, however, it’s very easy to find and set the kind of media you want to use, on the type of paper or canvas you want, and the effects are staggeringly good. Just like with digital painter PD Artist (and completely unlike real-life painting), the ArtRage tools aren’t constricted by the media-you can oil paint to your heart’s desire, then water color over the top. If you are looking for spray on photo-realistic rocks and leaves, try PD Artist. Some of the sticker shapes are odd, and they don’t include things like tree leaves that you could actually use to create a realistic plant feel, like you can with $79 PD Artist’s brush effects. The two special effects tools that are part of ArtRage Studio Pro are the Glitter Tube (which smears glitter) and a Sticker Spray, which applies shapes like dice, fireballs, flowers, ladybugs, etc. ![]()
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