Painting tutorials two painting projects discussed step by step

Polishing your artworks using ArtRage for producing finished and detailed artworks

Tips and ideas a collection of tips about speed painting with ArtRage

last revision : February 2010

2

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION This is a collection of some (hopefully useful) tips about speed

painting in general and using ArtRage for this purpose in

particular. It’s not a manual for that software nor a complete

workshop about speed painting : I don’t think I am an expert of

digital painting nor of ArtRage software and I don’t think I have

awesome secrets to share — I’m just passionate about learning

and about sharing what I learn, and that’s why I’m writing and

publishing this little article. I hope it’ll be a interesting lecture!

I’ll start with some misc tips and concepts and then I’ll go through

two small projects. Enough with the introduction, let’s start

introducing what speed painting more or less is.

SPEED PAINTING A speed painting is a painting where you try to define the

main concepts as quickly and effectively as possible. This is

my personal definition of speed painting and of course I don’t

pretend it to be valid for everyone, but it’ll be the starting point of

this article. I always thought of speed painting as a kind of

impressionistic approach — though with the painter attention

aiming not only to the light behaviour but also to the core of the

design we are wanting to portray. The result of speed painting can

be a bunch of little thumbnails, an autonomous picture or maybe a

sketch that will be used for further improvements and eventually

turn to be a finished piece.

What I’d like to point out is that a speed painting is not

necessarily looking rough and unfinished; the look is

secondary to the two parameters defining what a speed painting

is : effectiveness of communication and speed of realization. The

jump from a speed painting to a finished one lays on the amount

of time spent for bringing the painting one step further, after the

first goal (effectiveness of communication) is reached. Some

artists are actually spending a lot of time to make their paintings

have that unfinished raw feel!

In next pages I’ll write about some ideas and tips and illustrate

some painting process steps. I’m not saying they are the best tips,

processes and ideas, but they work good for me.

02

03

09

14

18

19

INDEX & INTRODUCTION

MISC NOTES ABOUT ARTRAGE

GUNS & FINISHED LOOK

PAINTING “GARAGE INC.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

AUTHOR’S GALLERY

3

ARTRAGE Let’s start saying something that could

sound pretty obvious : ArtRage is not

Photoshop nor Painter. Digital artists

are often jumping from a software to

another one and expecting them to

behave the same and have the same

feature set. I think every software

should be learned and used at its best,

keeping in mind its main purpose.

ArtRage is a natural painting software

that aims to reproducing a set of real

life instruments; the premise is similar

to Corel Painter’s one, though ArtRage

is also driven by a different and great

user experience concept.

That being said, wanting to work on

illustrations using ArtRage means

wishing to use the particular tools it

offers and adapting to its workflow and

its way of getting things done. This can

be quite a shock for artists that are

used to paint using mainly custom

brushes and the advanced brush

dynamics that Photoshop offers, or for

the ones that are doing all their shading

using burn and dodge tools; ArtRage

Pro 3 includes a new tool called

Stickers which can be used for

simulating some of Photoshop’s

custom brushes, but the experience will

still remain quite different. Wanting to

use ArtRage requires that we accept

those differences and we try to get the

best out of what ArtRage can do.

A common myth is that ArtRage can

be used only for rough sketches,

paint-overs and more generally

hobbyist stuff : this is quite wrong and

on the net we can find a lot of

examples of advanced artists that are

using ArtRage for producing high

quality artworks. ArtRage is also used

as a concept sketching tool by many

leading artists in the game and movie

industry, and it’s becoming more and

more popular, especially with its latest

release, that brings many features that

were missing (like selections).

Spending some time to learn the way

ArtRage works will hopefully convince

you that it can indeed be used for

producing all quality levels of 2D

artworks.

A last word about the tools we use for

creating : while this article is all about

ArtRage, you should feel encouraged

to use the right tool for the right

task. Being a purist is just a loss of

time and what matters in the end is

how well you achieve the results you

need or want to achieve. There are all

kinds of software; understanding which

one is better for what we need is a

great thing. Putting all of your preferred

software and tools together will create

your personal pipeline and will

contribute to developing your skills and

your own style.

4

LAYERS Machine resources are not infinite; no

matter how powerful your PC or Mac is,

you still need to efficiently manage

resources; each layer you add will

require some more memory and

processing power, and this is the first

reason for learning good layers

management. Note : ArtRage is not

supporting multiple CPUs at the

moment and its meta-data stuffed layer

technology is requiring a lot of power

and memory!

Using only the necessary number of

layers is indeed a good idea : you can

create all the layers you need but it’s

wise to merge them down once you

don’t really need them anymore; this

will free up memory and make your

painting experience smoother.

It’s obviously even wiser to keep layers

separate if they contain elements that

should be isolated, maybe for design

purposes or for making revisions

easier. Talking about the strategic part

of layer management, using groups for

keeping layers organized is another

great idea; organization is a valuable

skill and it will save us time and

increase the chances of future creative

editing on our paintings.

L a y e r s a r e p r o v i d i n g m a n y

management options and blending

methods that’s well worth exploring

and testing in different situations; the

blending methods should be quite

familiar to Painter and Photoshop users

and are extremely useful for painting in

general and especially for speed

painting.

Some great layer features I use often

are the transparency lock, merge

group contents, duplicate layer and

transform layers contents.

HOTKEYS ArtRage has some useful features that will make our painting

more intuitive and easier: one of them is the canvas

manipulation that allows rotation, zoom and panning.

For such functions and many more there are default

hotkeys already set, and using them is a real life-saver and

will drastically improve your workflow. Undo, redo, cut, past,

copy are working with usual CTRL based Windows-like

keyboard shortcuts.

On the right I listed some of the hotkeys I use the most while

painting (RMB = right mouse button, LMB = left mouse

button):

Canvas Rotation : ALT + RMB

Canvas Rotation reset : ALT + D

Canvas Zoom : mouse wheel or SHIFT + drag RMB

Canvas Zoom to 100% : SHIFT + D

Canvas Panning : drag RMB

Canvas lighting toggle : F5

Pick colour : ALT + LMB

Transform tool : SHIFT + T

Select tool : SHIFT + S

Resize brush : SHIFT + drag LMB

5

STICKERS We can say “sticker” is the ArtRage

term for calling custom brushes. A

sticker is composed by a number of

bitmap images and of parameters

associated with them. For a better

understanding of how to create stickers

you can refer to ArtRage help and to

various great tutorials available at

Ambient Design Forums.

But what are stickers good for? A basic

usage consists in repeating objects,

like the bolts and screws I added on the

vehicle in “Garage Inc.” tutorial, for

instance : by defining stickers for

painting repeating details we can both

save time and reach good quality

results — that’s if our stickers are

having a good quality and if we use

them in a correct way of course.

It is important to understand how to

integrate our stickers in the picture,

so that they don’t look fake and

misplaced : a good example are the

standard grass stickers, which can

have some practical usage but can also

produce a too much uniform and

artificial look.

A good trick is to use stickers on

separate layers and play with the layer

blending methods; the Multiply and

the Soft Light blending are often giving

great results when we use stickers for

adding details. Working on a separate

layer also gives us the chance of using

the eraser with the stencils for

removing parts of our stickers

brushwork and help the overall

integration.

I highly suggest spending some time

learning how to create and modify

stickers, creating the ones we need

instead of only using the standards

ones (though some standard ones are

actually useful and well done).

It’s wise to create named stickers

groups containing all of our saved

custom stickers organized for category

(misc, structures, nature, and so on),

so that we can find them fast and keep

track of all the variations.

You can also use stickers for adding

texture to the painting (better if on a

separate layer which you can then

manipulate) or for roughly defining

volumes and shapes that we can then

polish with the eraser or other tools;

from this last point of view, stickers are

a good way for exploring shapes if we

still don’t have a good idea about the

design of some elements in our

painting.

Stickers can often be used for different

tasks than the ones they were created

for, feel free to experiment and take

note of your discoveries!

In the picture I sketched a bit with some

custom stickers I use frequently : even

if each one of them was created for a

precise reason but they proved to be

useful in other situations too. Some of

them are actually adapted from

Photoshop ones, though as I said

before the two brush engines are very

different and many of the dynamics are

not available in ArtRage.

6

MASKED AIRBRUSH

That’s a widely used technique among graphic artists because it allows us to see our images with a fresh eye and easily spot

perspective mistakes. ArtRage has two default shortcuts for taking a fast look at our flipped image : H will flip horizontally, V will flip

vertically. They’re useful but I prefer to use the Transform All Layers function, since it allows me to work on the flipped image instead

of just taking a look at it : go to Edit, then Transform All Layers, then right click on the image and choose the flipping you prefer.

FLIPPING THE CANVAS

I often use this technique for selectively applying airbrush to a part of the picture without having to set up stencils; the name “masked

airbrush” is not very correct indeed, but it renders the idea. We basically create a new layer over the one where we want to apply the

colour, and we start using the airbrush on it, rotating the canvas so that our flow is going in the correct direction. After that we can

erase the parts of new colour we don’t need anymore, and eventually paint over it to fix places where we didn’t erase good. I t’s a very

simple and fast operation but can bring quite useful results.

A practical and quite fast way for

checking values in our painting is to

use a layer for muting the colours

(as explained in the picture here on

left). In this way we can understand

values better and fix eventual

problems we were not noticing with

the colours distracting our eyes.

VALUES

CHECKING

7

I spent countless hours trying to paint

trees, rocks, grass.. and failing quite

bad. I could not understand what was

so hard in painting things that I see

every day since I was a child; the point

is that seeing a thing and knowing how

to draw or paint that thing are

drastically different things. For being

able of painting something we must

look at it with a different eye, paying

attention to the relationships between

empty and filled space for instance. We

need to ask us questions about the

functions behind the forms and try to

sketch copying from live. I know this

can sound a trivial advice and not really

interesting, but I find it to be one of the

most important things to keep in mind

as artists. Studying nature and

everything we see is absolutely

valuable.

KNOWING WHAT WE WANT TO PAINT

As many greatest artists (like C.Mullins

and B.Vallejo, just to name two great

examples of digital and traditional

artists) repeat, using photos in our

artworks is not an evil thing at all;

it’s all about the usage we do of them

and the results we need to achieve.

Photo reference is crucial for learning

how to paint things since we can’t be

in all places of this world and see

everything in person!

Photos can also be the base for

custom brushes, for stencils, for

textures : being able of discovering an

interesting texture and taking a good

photo of it is a great artistic merit

already. Being able of using that

material creatively for achieving our

goal is even better.

Using photos for improving our

creations is a great thing, and should

be not confused with cheap tricks like

painting over a photo and going

around saying we painted it on our

own, behaving like we’re just like

Sargent : that’s pretty lame indeed,

and ultimately useless and sad.

PHOTOS

Sketching a lot of thumbnails is a very good way for learning to speed paint, because it allows the artist to concentrate on painting the

most important things — without caring too much about the look and the quality of the finished piece. A thumbnail is usually a low

resolution image painted or sketched with the goal of setting a mood and a lighting or of defining a base concept : in the one I posted

here for instance, I needed to quickly paint a night scene with the ruins of few huts in the jungle, and a river flowing by. The resulting

image is not good or interesting as a

painting per se but it contains all the

information I needed to include : the

abandoned hu ts , the jung le

environment, the night mood.

Everything is sketched very roughly

and the whole thumbnail took me less

than 10 minutes, but it allowed me to

explore solutions and synthesize;

once I’m happy with one or two of

those thumbnails and I feel I

established the concepts I can go

further and repaint it paying attention

to perspective, details and so on.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THUMBNAILS

8

ArtRage offers few but effective options

for tweaking our brushes: my advice is

once more to spend some time learning

how to make the software help us

achieving our goals.

In the first picture below I posted four

examples of strokes made with my

favourite brush; it’s a tweaked oil

brush that’s proving to be very useful

and quite versatile, so I thought to

share it.

The first stroke is made with a light

pressure and it’s giving us a great

texture thanks to the canvas and the

bristle becoming very visible. Changing

the canvas texture and choosing a

good combination of colour and value

can help us adding beautiful texture to

our paintings. ArtRage can have

different textures on different layers

and this is a precious way for building

interesting layered textures without

resorting to images.

The second stroke is using a stronger

pressure and it’s giving us a rich and

powerful stroke, useful when blocking

planes for our volumes and for

sketching; it’s also great for adding

finer detail if used with a smaller size,

though the ink pen is usually better for

that kind of job; it all depends on the

look we are going after.

The two progressions of strokes are

showing how this brush allows us to

build heavy textured or less textured

gradients, with very good blending

capabilities. When blending with this

brush it’s important to pick each time

the correct value and colour from our

painting, in a similar fashion to the

popular SAPALO (sample and paint at

low opacity) technique that is very

familiar especially to Photoshop

painters.

I do most of my blending using this

same brush but sometimes I also

integrate a custom palette knife into the

process, usually in the first stages of

the painting.

A VERSATILE BRUSH

I sketched the second picture as an

example of what I said about using this

brush with paper textures : everything

on that image is painted using only this

brush and changing the texture

parameters on different layers. As the

image hopefully shows it is possible to

build interesting textures playing only

with ArtRage standard papers and a

very simple oil brush : it’s all about

experimenting and saving presets of

what you find useful, so that you can

access it faster next time you need it.

The brush is available for download

in the same page of my blog where

you downloaded this PDF, together

with 10 more that I use often.

9

Some people thinks ArtRage is only good for rough

oils and that producing detailed artworks is not

possible. That’s not true since ArtRage provides us

with enough tools for reaching the degree of detail

we prefer. I like to start painting on a canvas sized to

3000x2000 pixels or something close to it and scale

it down when I’m done: working with high

resolutions will allow us to paint finer detail and

more easily. Even if this article is about speed

painting, let’s take a look at some ways for achieving

a more finished look when needed.

I’m not a lover of weapons unless they’re inside a

videogame, but since they’re a good example of

mechanical and detailed objects, let’s fake we’re

designing a weapon for a game and see how to go

from a thumbnail sketch to a more finished artwork.

We’ll fake our creative director gave us the following

description : an assault rifle with a kind of sci-fi look,

used mainly in fast paced action and requiring fire

power more than precision. First of all we’ll have to

do some sketches and choose the one we think is

better fitting the initial concept; I sketched some

and here on right is the one I did choose.

WEAPON DESIGN AND FINISHED LOOK

10

I polished the silhouette of the weapon

improving it where needed and I started

blocking the volumes (using the airbrush

and the ink pen), basically trying to

understand how to organize the shapes that

will visually fill the silhouette. Once the

values and the shapes will be working I’ll

be able of polishing the result and start

rendering the weapon more in depth.

In this stage it’s important to go quite fast

and don’t lose too much time on details that

will only become possible after the overall

concept is working.

For achieving a better control when

blocking the volumes it’s goo to try the

variations on separate layers and only

merge them down when we are sure things

are working; at the same time, try to avoid

having too many layers, or your job will

easily become a mess and ArtRage will

start slowing down.

Remember : search engines are our

friends! We have no excuses for not

knowing how a 40mm grenade looks like

and other stuff we eventually need to paint.

The net is full of references and

information and building an organized

collection of them is truly a good idea.

When painting shapes that are repeating it is useful to

create custom stickers on the fly : this way we can

achieve better results and be quite faster (this should be

an article about speed painting after all!). After we

finished with our sticker we can save it as a preset and

use it next time we’ll need, thus slowly building our own

valuable library of components.

The very simple sticker on the left was created while

polishing the rifle’s silhouette, and used for adding

some details on it.

11

The picture above shows the roughly

rendered weapon in the middle of the

detailing phase : this is the part of this

wa l k th rough tha t dea l s w i t h

approaching a more finished look, and

for achieving it we’ll keep using the

selections and the eraser on separated

layers but also increase the usage of

the ink pen, changing the smoothing

settings according to our needing;

becoming familiar with the smoothing

factor is quite important.

Using the transparency lock is also

pretty handy, especially if together with

a simple trick : duplicate the layer that

you want to work on, lock the

transparency and do all your painting

work. When you finished you can take

the eraser and get rid of what you don’t

want (remember to turn on the

transparency before doing it!) and the

original layer will show below the new

one. Using this technique you can work

very fast and try all kind of edits on

your image in an efficient way.

Another good practice is to become

familiar with rotating and panning the

canvas when using the various

tools : in this way for instance we can

get the correct flow from the airbrush

and we can draw better curves with the

ink pen.

ArtRage can paint straight lines if we

keep CTRL pressed and we click on

the starting and ending point of the

line : this can be extremely useful when

working on projects that are requiring a

lot of shapes with straight edges. As I

said before, it’s really valuable to learn

which tool and which feature are

working better for us in a certain

situation and how can we take

advantage of the software power.

I changed the background from white to

gray because it helps me to better read

the values. Talking about values : this

is a kind of “product showcase” so the

lighting is quite diffused and

omnipresent, though I’m trying to give it

a directional component too.

12

Before going on to the final step of our

project I’d like to spend some words

about the detailing phase.

From my point of view detailing has

basically two goals : making the

concept more interesting by filling it

with things that please the eye, and

then making the concept more

believable. For our weapon the

detailing starts with the observation of

real weapons; as I said before the net

is full of articles, photos and videos

about everything, so it’s relatively easy

to get familiar with the things we’ve to

paint or draw. After I established the

kind of details I wanted to add, I started

thinking on how to add them fast —

thus staying faithful to the time

constraints of the speed painting

process. The point is that we could

actually spend days on our artworks

painting everything using only oils and

achieving great and sharp results, but

we are wanting to do it in less time so

that we can create more variations if

needed, and face deadlines if we are

having them.

I said already that it is a good idea to

create custom stickers for painting

repeating details. Another workflow I

use often consists on using selections

for creating simple shapes , combining

them for getting more complex ones,

and then using various tools for making

those new shapes to look like the ones

I’m needing.

ArtRage makes this quite simple and

fast, thanks to intuitive selections, good

layers management and the priceless

transparency lock.

In the next two pictures I illustrate the

basic steps for creating the three thin

cavities in the front of the weapon.

The first step is about creating

the shape; there are many

ways but I like to do it using

selections. You could use

stencils instead for instance.

I’m creating many layers and

giving names to them so that

it’s easier to show what’s going

on, but all this work is actually

done in a single layer while

painting a real life project; the

result can then be duplicated,

rotated, and so on. It’s good

to create the details in an

higher resolution than the

needed one, so resampling

won’t kill its sharpness.

The second steps shows an

example of simple detailing for

the shape : I used the airbrush

for creating the illusion of a very

little depth and then I used the

ink pen for drawing a simple

inner bevel. This is only a

cheap example by the way :

you could go on and study a

better lighting, increase the

bevel, add some texture, and

so on. It all depends on the

goals you have.

My advice is to save all of your

components on a file from

where you can import them

when needed.

13

We’re almost at the end of our project :

the image above shows the weapon

being already 90% rendered. Few

things need to get fixed and finally I’ll

work on a basic presentation (the

results are visible in the image that

opens this little tutorial).

Comparing this image with the one on

page 10 we can see that many details

were added and they’re making the

weapon more believable and also

giving it a more alive look, as if it was

used in many and quite harsh battles. A

lot of the merit of the aged look

depends on texturing, so I’d like to

spend some words about it.

Textures can be a great help but also

a quite subtle enemy : they can add

interest and details to you image but at

the same time they can cover your hard

work. To avoid this you need to learn to

apply textures on separate layers and

then use the eraser on them to get rid

of what is not really needed, or for

making something slightly less visible.

In some parts of this image I wanted a

very grunge look and I went quite far

with the texturing phase, actually losing

some of the shading I did before.

Design decisions must always be

made for the sake of the concept and

not for the “respect” we have for some

parts of our picture that we like or that

maybe required a lot of work. The final

result is what matters!

Texturing is not strictly meaning taking

an image an putting it on top of what

you painted; sometimes you’re lucky

and it can be enough, but most of times

it’ll only look a poor choice. For this

weapon I used the ink pen and

custom stickers for sketching various

scratches and stains on different

layers, erasing stuff here and there,

playing with blending modes and finally

mixing layers together. It takes some

experimenting but after a while you’ll

discover you can create interesting

textures even with a basic usage of the

ink pen and the eraser.

The concept could have been shown

better, putting less emphasis on the

mood and more on the volumes (which

is what a 3D modeller would love us to

do, since he’ll probably have to model

the weapon) — a further step toward a

very good presentation of the concept

would be to roughly model it in 3D and

then paint over it, which is a quite

common workflow with such subjects.

In our case we wanted to have our

project ready and presentable as

fast as possible; it’s not really a very

fast speed painting, but with a total

work time of 3 hours it’s still pretty fast.

In a day of work we could paint 2 of

those concepts and that would be quite

good.

The final image is almost 3000 pixels in

width and this allows us to work more

on it and further improve its look and

even print it. I kept some elements on

separate layers so that I can get rid of

them if needed (like the highlights and

the heavy texturing — and of course all

of the presentation related stuff) : this is

a good practice since it still leaves

room for quite big changes if needed.

14

PAINTING “GARAGE INC.” While “Garage Inc.” is not having the

usual look you expect from a speed

painting (rough strokes, simplified

shapes, minimal detail and so on) I

think it still falls in the category of

speed painting since it required few

time and it was completely organized

around the main concept, which was to

represent a futuristic vehicle that is

staying in a dusty hangar, waiting to be

repaired.

In this tutorial I’ll show you some steps

concerning the painting process and I’ll

use them to underline some concepts I

find to be interesting.

I’d like to point out that this is by no

means the best or only way of working,

and that my advices could work fine for

someone and don’t work at all for

someone else. I’m always very

interested in learning and taking a look

at the way other artists are working, for

pure curiosity’s sake, so I thought it

could have been nice to share similar

info. My method can change a lot and

the one showed here is not the only

one I currently use; I think it’s really

valuable for an artist to be able of

exploring and changing workflow,

con t i nuous l y i n teg ra t ing new

knowledge and energies into it.

15

02 I think I can see the side view of a vehicle in the mess I created

in step one, so I use the eraser to cut the not needed stuff away

and give the vehicle a sharp silhouette. This process is close to

sculpting we can say; the creative usage of the eraser can help

working with the concepts of empty and filled space, which can

give interesting results and definitely improve the way we

approach the creative process. ArtRage is not letting us use

custom stickers as erasers, but we can obtain great results

using the eraser over stencils. In this step it was enough using a

simple hard edged eraser.

01 I have my concept in mind and I’m ready to start painting : first of

all I want to get rid of the white canvas and have a background

that is in tune with the mood I want to get. I start painting a more

or less uniform background using a mix of oils and custom

stickers. On a new layer I start sketching random shapes using

custom stickers and others tools, looking for an interesting design

concept I could follow. In this step it is important to feel free and

just let things happen and imagination flow without worrying too

much about technical matters and rules.

03 I create a new layer over the existing two and using one of my

favourite custom stickers I start blocking values. It is important to

understand that values give precious information about the kind

of material is being painted, and that we must keep in mind that

the final value is showing the amount of light the object receives

but also its material it.

A good contrast is important for painting an interesting

picture, so I started working on it using the big dark mass (that

probably covers an engine) and the thin stripes. I still don’t know

what to do with the cockpit, and this insecurity can be spotted in

the messed perspective and the absence of a clear design

direction. We’ll fix that later.

16

05 I start working on the engine mass and on the cockpit, trying to

create a new contrast between the big empty surfaces and more

detailed ones. For the whole painting I actually used the same

tools over and over again: a custom oil brush (for 70% of

painting), a bunch of custom stickers (10% of painting), a

custom palette knife, the basic airbrush, ink pen, custom stencils

and the eraser. I suggest you to try all the tools in ArtRage but to

also understand which are the ones that are working better for

you and for the way you create; once you understand this you

can tweak the tools and save them as custom presets.

04 I decide the time is right for sketching an environment for the

vehicle, so I create a new layer between the vehicle and the

canvas, trying to block a simple hangar. I want a bright and foggy

weather outside but also a good lighting inside, provided by other

entrances that are more distant from our subject. Using oils and

blur effect I also add a quick shadow to help me position the

vehicle in space. I thought the cockpit should be open since the

vehicle is being repaired, and to open it I select it with

polygonal tool, cut it, paste it on a new layer and rotate it. I also

cropped the image to improve the composition.

06 The concept is quite near to what I had in mind at the beginning,

so I can spend few minutes to sketch some foreground and

background elements that can help me reach two goals : make

the hangar more believable and “close” the picture so that the

viewer attention will stay in the centre of the image. You can

spot ArtRage standard chain and cable stickers. The texturing

in last steps was done using custom stencils I created from

some photos I took over the years; always bring a camera with

you and take photos of all the textures and references you find

interesting, photos are really valuable for a concept artist.

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08 The chains were looking too stiff so I rotated them a bit and

detailed them here and there with eraser and oils. Using some

useful custom stickers I add bolts and screws, while some

stencil and texture work provides more details for giving

character to the image; textures and stencils are coming from

an huge set of photos I took in a military cemetery in Moscow.

The number on the vehicle is helping the viewer interest and

gives more personality to the vehicle.

07 One design decision I was unsure about was about the way the

vehicle was staying suspended in air. I was thinking that a

levitation was not really coherent with the concept of “damaged,

needing repairing” so I decided to add some chains, sketching

them fast with the ArtRage standard chain sticker : this is

producing a too much perfect and uniform result, but I was too

lazy for creating a custom chain sticker at that moment, so I went

for standard one. I also worked a bit on the shadows, trying to

bring the viewer’s attention even closer to the subject.

09 In the final step I work on the atmosphere (adding some dust

with custom stickers) and on the mood of the overall picture; the

green was looking interesting but I decided to play a bit with hue

and I changed to a tone that looks less military and hopefully

more appealing. At this point I only need to resize the picture,

sharpen it (outside of ArtRage since it’s not having an unsharp

mask at the moment), sign it and bring it into this PDF.

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About the author My name is Andrea A. Bianco and I am an illustrator,

concept artist and photographer working between Italy

and Russia. I also have a background as web and

graphic designer, though I am getting more and more

involved with the challenging world of illustration and

concept art. When I’m not painting or sketching I spend

time on my other big passion, composing music and

guitar playing.

CONCLUSION

ArtRage offers plenty of features and different ways of

accomplishing goals; learning to analyze the problems

and to find solutions is a gratifying and useful activity. I

therefore encourage everyone to spend some time

trying to get used to the software and see how to make

it work the way we need.

I know it has been said countless times, but I repeat it

once more : a common mistake is to think the tool is

more important than the artist, rushing to download the

latest software and play with its newest feature : we

should keep in mind art history proves that people can

produce great art even with the simplest tools, like a

pencil and a piece of paper. The availability of hardware

and software is growing and it’s easy to waste time

trying all kind of software instead of working on

improving ourselves as artists; that time would be

indeed better spent on studies about colour theory,

values, composition, perspective and especially

observing the reality around us with an analytic eye.

Thanks for reading this little article, I hope it was an

interesting lecture. Have a nice time painting!

USEFUL LINKS

ArtRage

website of ArtRage software

http://www.artrage.com

CGSociety

society of digital artists

http://www.cgsociety.org

deviantART

huge online art community

http://www.deviantart.com

Conceptart.org

great place for learning

http://www.conceptart.org

Web Gallery Of Art

precious free gallery with masters from the past

http://www.wga.hu

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AUTHOR’ S GALLERY

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