Most digital painters favour Corel Painter, but there are other great art programs out there too. ArtRage is one of them and it can be used to great effect, as you can see in this image above by regular Digital Artist contributor Lionel Cutmore (Ferryman, 2011, ArtRage; Digital Artist 25). Here are five reasons why you should consider giving ArtRage a try.
You can use metallic paints. Don’t spend ages on the insanely complicated colour schemes metallic highlights require – whack them straight in by using ArtRage’s Metallic slider on any colour and paint type. You can create everything from subtle sparkle to total bling by increasing or decreasing the amount of Metallic in your paint.
ArtRage offers great impasto effects. They’re easy to use – no worrying about depth or lofting a la Painter – and give fat, luscious strokes of paint that you can almost feel. And you can slide that impasto around with Palette Knives too.
ArtRage for iPad integrates with the desktop edition. There’s some awesome technical trickery going on here. You can start sketching out an image on your iPad using the ArtRage app, then when you want to rez it up and finesse it simply bounce your image over to the desktop version for some high-res love.
There’s a free version! Yes, the f-word is a major attraction here. If you’re unsure whether ArtRage is for you, you can grab a demo of the latest version or a full Starter edition of the classic ArtRage 2 for nothing.
There’s a cat in the Layers panel. Seriously. His name is Tycho, he lives in the ArtRage development studio, and sometimes he’ll pop up to chase your layers when you’re moving them, and occasionally bite your update window.
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