Experimenting with Art Rage

After watching a few coloring tutorials using a painting program called Art Rage, I decided to download the demo and give it a try.  I literally have no painting experience, so I felt pretty lost as I started to get into it.  The pine cone above was my first attempt.  I wanted to stick to something simple, but dynamic, and this fit the bill.  I wasn’t super excited when I initially finished the piece, but it’s starting to grow on me.

My second attempt was the 9 from my train post.  There are a few things I think I did successfully, but overall this image fell short for me.  I guess I can’t expect them to all be winners, especially when I’m experimenting with a new program that’s intended to mimic a medium I am unfamiliar with.  I don’t know if I’ll continue experimenting with Art Rage, or look into another painting program.  The painting seems fine, but I experienced some technical difficulties.  I could never figure out the hotkeys, and the program also crashed on me multiple times while I was painting. 

I then returned to Illustrator and Photoshop to work on something a little different.  Here, I took a photo of Leanna, reference image below, and flexed my artistic license.  I was attempting to go more towards super hero, but I think ended up somewhere between there and sultry.  Again, there are things I think I did really well here, I especially like the way the boots came out, but there is tons of room for improvement.  The jacket came out softer than I intended, and her face seems a little off to me.  Every attempt is a learning experience, so I try to take away from both my successes and failures.

The plan is to eventually moved towards sketching my own images, but that is going to require a lot of practice and a scanner.  I’ve always struggled with figure drawing, and have never had much instruction in that regard.  I’m thinking of heading to the local library sometime and seeing what resources they have.  If any one has any good recommendations for figure drawing resources and instruction please give a shout out in the comments. 

Enjoy the weekend,

Ryan