ArtRage: First Impressions

If you guys don't know already, I'm a huge art application junkie. To name a few I have/had:

• GIMP (this is the only one I no longer have, but as it's freeware anyways...)
• Photoshop and all the other Design Suite apps (I downgraded my CS3 to my current CS2 because the icons are prettier :D)
• openCanvas 1.1
• openCanvas 4 (tool of choice)
• Easy Paint Tool SAI
• MS Paint - of course

Now I've got another to add to my collection. After reading a few forum topics about art applications, this name kept coming up: ArtRage. (And openCanvas never came up.)
So here's my first ever "review" thingamajig.

So I got ArtRage Studio 3. My first impression was the interface - it looked really nice! They took the time to round out the corners, for one, and give everything a sort of cohesiveness.  Here's a screenshot of ArtRage compared to PS CS2 and SAI.

Easy Paint Tool SAI... sadly, I forgot to open a new file so you can see the canvas.

Photoshop CS2.

ArtRage Studio 3 - obviously the prettiest one of the bunch!

One of the first things I noticed were how the brushes were displayed and how it mirrored the colour wheel. I think almost everything is collapsable.

ArtRage is very simular to the concept of Corel Painter in the sense that it tries to imitate real artistic medias.

Test run:

I'm quite fond of the paint tube combined with the pallette knife, which is what I used to make that huge sploch of colour in the background. I drew the face in with a pencil and a pastel. The birds and the beads on the left are stickers.

The reasons why I chose Studio 3 was for the watercolours. It looked so enticing in the preview image as it really looked, well, real. The eye in the top right-hand corner was painted using watercolours, and I have to say, I love the brush. It really imitates the qualities of watercolours. It can create vibrant strokes of colours as well as mix together to create a beautiful gradient effect. Other tools I used for the eye was a pencil.

Other brushes I tested out:

• Brush: a oval brush which imitates something akin to acrylics or oils. Streaks are left on the paint as if the brush hairs were really sweeping into them. It's a harder brush compared to the others.
• Fineliner: a circular, opaque brush. It work well for fine lining if the sensitivity was increased. I'm not much of a fan of it because it's blocky colour is so jarring against gentleness of the imitated brushes.
• Palette Knife: it's also featured as one of the blending in tools in many graphic programs. So this is really just the "mixer".
• Paint Tube: can only be used effectively with the knife, or else it'd look like this funny tube of colour.
• Crayon: a scruffy, textured brush.
• Pastel: simular to the crayon except softer as has a chalk-like quality.
• Pencil: akin to the crayon except the chunks of colour are closer together as well as the brush being generally thinner. I personally don't see the pencil like quality of it.
• Glitter: the weirdest thing about this is that it can also be smudged by the palette knife. This can be used for some cool effects.

One of the special things about ArtRage are the stickers. It's akin to some of the decorated brushes in PS, especially if the brush was a picture. I really enjoy ArtRage's birds in flight stickers, though. It looks like a good way to cheat my way out of painting a proper background!
Also, you can adjust how metallic the brushes should be, which is a first of any program I've seen for sure! All it does is turn up the contrast - and at 100% it looks like an ugly filter has been put on top of the line. Kudos for the innovation, though.

Also, I'm not too crazy with the lag, but my computer seems to be lagging regardless nowadays so this point can hardly be valid. I don't know if it's ArtRage's exceptional GUI, but I think that could be one of them. Well, it's a big problem because this really hinders how often I will use the program.


All in all, ArtRage is a good solid program, especially if you're into simulating traditional mediums. I recommend it for people who just like doodling or people who are new to CG art and have trouble transitioning from traditional to computer. One day I'll get Corel Painter, but ArtRage seems like a good replacement for all the poor people!