4
Setting the Canvas Texture
Next, choose your painting’s canvas. This will help
develop the mood of the piece as it reacts to your choice of
brushes. It’ll also be present throughout the painting
process, giving you a consistent foundation to work from.
I tend to stick with the watercolour paper canvas, because
it creates a great visual effect.3
Customising the Toolbox
The Toolbox panel is a custom set of brushes that I tend to
use the most. You can create your own by enabling the Toolbox
window (click View>Toolbox panel). Whenever you want to
add a preset to your Toolbox, right-click it and choose Add to
Toolbox. Your toolbox resets with each painting, but you can
save your toolbox so that it reloads with each new piece.
5
Laying down the first layer of paint
I usually place the sketch on its own layer with a transparent background. I set the sketch layer to Multiply and then paint on the layer
underneath. This enables me to lay down the colour without worrying about messing up the initial sketch, and is a quick way to fill in the
background, too. When filling in with paint I use the Pastel tool. It’s the perfect brush for tackling large areas and it doesn’t have any additional
features that might cause ArtRage to suffer lag when working with a large brush size.
Workshops