Pintura Rapida

last revision : February 2010

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

C ONTENTS
I NTRODUCTION

02
INDEX & INTRODUCTION

03
MISC NOTES ABOUT ARTRAGE

This is a collection of some (hopefullyuseful) 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 writingand
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.

S PEED PAINTING

09
GUNS & FINISHED LOOK

14
PAINTING “GARAGE INC.”

18
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

19
AUTHOR’S GALLERY

A speedpainting 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 thelight 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 tothe 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 thatunfinished 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.

2

A RTRAGE
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 andexpecting 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 beingsaid, wanting to work on
i llustrations 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 dodgetools; ArtRage
Pro 3 includes a new tool called
Stickers which can be used for
s imulating 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,
p aint -overs and
more...