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
CONTENTS

02 INTRODUCTION
This is a collection of some (hopefully useful) tips about speed
painting in general and using ArtRage for this purpose in
INDEX & INTRODUCTION
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

03 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
MISC NOTES ABOUT ARTRAGE two small projects. Enough with the introduction, let’s start
introducing what speed painting more or less is.

09 SPEED PAINTING
A speed painting is a painting where you try to define the
GUNS & FINISHED LOOK 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

14 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
PAINTING “GARAGE INC.” 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

18
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
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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!

19 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,
AUTHOR’S GALLERY processes and ideas, but they work good for me.

2
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.
3
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.
Layers are providing many
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 Canvas Rotation : ALT + RMB
more intuitive and easier: one of them is the canvas Canvas Rotation reset : ALT + D
manipulation that allows rotation, zoom and panning. Canvas Zoom : mouse wheel or SHIFT + drag RMB
For such functions and many more there are default Canvas Zoom to 100% : SHIFT + D
hotkeys already set, and using them is a real life-saver and Canvas Panning : drag RMB
will drastically improve your workflow. Undo, redo, cut, past, Canvas lighting toggle : F5
copy are working with usual CTRL based Windows-like Pick colour : ALT + LMB
keyboard shortcuts. Transform tool : SHIFT + T
Select tool : SHIFT + S
On the right I listed some of the hotkeys I use the most while Resize brush : SHIFT + drag LMB
painting (RMB = right mouse button, LMB = left mouse
button):

4
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.

5
FLIPPING THE CANVAS
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.

VALUES
CHECKING
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.

MASKED AIRBRUSH
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. It’s a very
simple and fast operation but can bring quite useful results.

6
KNOWING WHAT WE WANT TO PAINT
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.

PHOTOS
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.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THUMBNAILS

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 huts, the jungle
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.

7
A VERSATILE BRUSH
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.
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.
8
WEAPON DESIGN AND FINISHED LOOK
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.

9
 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.

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.

10
The picture above shows the roughly
rendered weapon in the middle of the
detailing phase : this is the part of this
walkthrough that deals with
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.
11
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
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.
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 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.
12
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.
13
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 info. My method can change a lot and
use them to underline some concepts I the one showed here is not the only
find to be interesting. one I currently use; I think it’s really
valuable for an artist to be able of
I’d like to point out that this is by no exploring and changing workflow,
means the best or only way of working, continuously integrating new
and that my advices could work fine for knowledge and energies into it.
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
14
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.

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.

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.

15
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.

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.

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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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.

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.

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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CONCLUSION USEFUL LINKS
ArtRage offers plenty of features and different ways of ArtRage
accomplishing goals; learning to analyze the problems website of ArtRage software
and to find solutions is a gratifying and useful activity. I http://www.artrage.com
therefore encourage everyone to spend some time
trying to get used to the software and see how to make CGSociety
it work the way we need. society of digital artists
http://www.cgsociety.org
I know it has been said countless times, but I repeat it
once more : a common mistake is to think the tool is deviantART
more important than the artist, rushing to download the huge online art community
latest software and play with its newest feature : we http://www.deviantart.com
should keep in mind art history proves that people can
produce great art even with the simplest tools, like a Conceptart.org
pencil and a piece of paper. The availability of hardware great place for learning
and software is growing and it’s easy to waste time http://www.conceptart.org
trying all kind of software instead of working on
improving ourselves as artists; that time would be Web Gallery Of Art
indeed better spent on studies about colour theory, precious free gallery with masters from the past
values, composition, perspective and especially http://www.wga.hu
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!

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.

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