ArtRage and Digital Painting for iPad and iPhone

ArtRage and Digital Painting for iPad and iPhone

Drawing of a dwarf.

I was intrigued by the differences between ArtRage and other art apps like ProCreate and Sketchbook
Pro so I got my hands on a copy and this is what I have learned.

I discovered that with ArtRage has some areas that sets it apart from other apps on  market such as access to a tool box with a wide range of brushes, pencils, markers, airbrush, etc. that feel more like the real thing than just about any app I have tried so far. ArtRage includes important features found in other strong drawing/illustration programs such as layers, history tool and the ability to save your work in different file formats. But in the end even with all of the bells and whistles there is one thing hold ArtRage back from making it a real "go to" app for me.

Playing with brush settings.

Pros:
Tool Box - ArtRage comes loaded with a ton of tools available for artists who use a wide range of media. You can spend hours exploring the settings as you try different brushes, markers, pencils, airbrushes, etc. and before you know it you could look up and realized that you have lost a hour just trying them all out (like I did) as you find out what each tool can do. Due to all of the rendering required for each brush however you will notice a slowdown using this app on iPad 3 or older iPad devices. The publisher recommends closing all other apps and restarting the application if a slowdown does occurs. This does help
with slow down, but I notice that there is a slight lag even on the first iPad Air and the iPad mini.

Cons:
The publisher states in its FAQ that the slowdown is created on purpose to mimic the speed of using actual drawing media, but some of the slowdown feels as if it is going well beyond mimicking the slower pace of the media and instead feels more lagged than purposeful. It would be nice if the speed could be significantly increased if desired. The average user will notice this "slow down" making drawing/painting very frustrating. However, if you are very meticulous in your work I don't think you will notice the slow down quite so much.

Improvements:

iPhone drawing.

The brushes themselves are very customizable. When using the watercolor brush you can adjust brush size, pressure, the load (how much paint is on the brush), bleed and even make adjustments to the paper to determine if the paper is wet or dry. Some implements, like pastel or crayon, only allow you to adjust the size and pressure which makes sense when using dry media over wet media. It would be interesting if some of these tools had extended options such as... using baby oil with oil pastel to give it a softer and more even finish or maybe a water based colored pencil where you can color in part of a drawing and add a little water to soften the edges.

Overall I think that ArtRage is a very good program if you are running the latest and greatest versions of iPad and iPhone (the iPhone app is also very good as far as iPhone drawing apps go.... I have a iPhone 6 (not the 6 plus) and I am not a fan of drawing on that size of a screen.

4 out of 5 stars