![]() ![]() Here's examples of the bent beetle Paragrilus (left), and unbent (right). When I went in to fix them, I used Photoshop Elements 6, the eraser, free transform and the clone tool. A couple of the beetles had a kind of "squashed banana" look to them as a result of me trying to inject more dynamic poses and bending them where they don't bend. If you'd like to learn how to save your own custom tools, I made a short video tutorial last year:ĪrtRage is powerful for painting, but sometimes a little less perfect for editing. I've placed some brush strokes on the white area beneath the menu so you can see what they look like without the rest of the bug's head. You can save multiple menus, and make them available to more than one file. Here's a sample of a few light-colour brushstrokes on a dark ground from the painting for Texania:Ĭustom brush menu. I also saved a custom brush that I found was useful for fine detail, hairs and lines on a number of the beetles. I found that often, the colours I chose needed to be more brilliant than the ones in the photo references to "read" similarly to the eye. You can see the point of grey chosen on the colour palette at right that I've listed as "grey dots". Here's one of mine, for Trachys:Ĭustom colour palette for Trachys, the most brilliant of the subjects. Another nice feature in ArtRage is you can store and name specific palettes. The little greyish tadpole strokes in the bottom half show how varying pressure even in a single stroke can add to the detail.Ī few of the beetles were shiny brown shades, others were multiple bright metallic shades. ![]() ![]() Up close, closer than I look while actually painting, you can see metallic green pain near the top swathed in more liquid greens. It's one of the main features of working on a desktop that remains superior to the iPad version. The Intuos 3 graphics tablet has 1024 levels of pressure, so you can achieve some subtlety of colour depending on how hard you press. This painting required a lot of stippling. Xenorhipus, one of the more colourful jewel beetles for this commission. However, as the project went on, I realized that more than watercolour would be needed to bring out the richness of texture and metallic colour on some of these little animals. It can give the work the feel of old naturalist's studies. I planned to use watercolours for the beetles early on. The big advance in Studio Pro (also known as ArtRage 3) over the previous 2.5 version is, in my opinion, the amazingly realistic watercolours. In ArtRage you can control the paper or canvas surface (or blackboard, or sandpaper or.) and the digital paint handles differently on each type. I feel just like I'm dipping into my palette or brush box. These two palettes, tools and colours, mean everything to me as a classically-taught painter. On the right, the colours, allowing you to adjust tones and how metallic the paint appears. On the left, all your tools: oil and watercolour brushes, inking pens, pencils, erasers and host of other tools from technical to goofy. Screenshot showing the interface, from my original test of some of ArtRage Studio Pro's tools. Instead of drop-down menus, ArtRage includes all the important tools right on the screen in two quarter-circles in the corners: The main attraction for me with this program has always been the interface. Each one is relatively affordable (under $100 for the PC version, compared to several hundred for Photoshop). If you're not familiar, it's a digital painting program with versions available for PC, Mac, iPad and the iPhone. I've tried a number of digital painting programs, and by far my favourite is ArtRage. Adjustments and corrections to ensure scientific accuracy are much easier with digital media than with traditional paints. Since then, I sometimes find it more useful to paint digitally, especially for a project like these beetles. In my undergraduate degree, I worked mainly in oil paint. After that though, I have decisions to make. When tackling a new illustration subject for the first time, I like to begin with mechanical pencil and bristol paper. Today: Painting Bugs with ArtRage Studio Pro The result? My first series of scientific illustrations, instead of the off-kilter, surreal science paintings I'm known for. Earlier this year I was commissioned by entomologist and insect photographer Morgan Jackson of Biodiversity in Focus to contribute to a soon-to-be-published, honest-to-gosh dead-tree book about jewel beetles in Ontario. ![]()
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