ArtRage 2.0

There’s been a something of a resurgence of ‘natural media’ painting software in recent months, with Corel updating Painter and new programs such as Project Dogwaffle appearing on the scene.

ArtRage is another new addition to the digital painter’s armoury. It certainly doesn’t have the depth or precision of Painter – at just $19.95 you could hardly expect that – but it does have a smoother interface than Project Dogwaffle, and is fun to play around with.

When you launch the program you are presented with a blank white canvas, which has a series of small tool palettes dotted around its edges. The most important is the Tool Picker palette, which allows you to select painting tools such as the paintbrush, paint roller, pen and chalk. Other palettes allow you to select colours or to adjust settings such as the thickness and tilt of the brush stroke.

You can either get straight to work painting by hand, or you can import a ‘tracing image’, which acts as a transparent overlay, allowing you to trace over the image and reproduce it using your own brush strokes. There’s nothing particularly original about any of these features, but the program has a nice feel to it, which encourages experimentation.

You might not want to use ArtRage to produce finished artwork, but this app could work well as a tool for producing quick sketches and ideas before producing the final version in Painter. There’s a trial version available, too, and it’s definitely worth downloading to see if you like what this program can do.