My Oil Brush Presets

[Delofasht]

I just jumped on the ArtRage scene recently as I have absolutely fallen in love with this program, never encountered such an excellent traditional media emulator in all my years, I've been dreaming of this kind of program since I was 10 and playing around in the early stages of Adobe Photoshop with a mouse on a computer. I couldn't imagine it ever getting as close as this program has come. All that being said I spent the past 2 days customizing my Oil Brush Presets, trying to optimize them for the kind of workflow I like to use.

They are numbered based on my general approach to painting, and generally move from thinner paints to thicker as I move into later stages of painting. Two of them are marked as 4, that's because that's the phase in which I alternate between them. I am constantly adjusting their size on the fly by holding Shift and dragging my stylus to adjust their size so I don't pay much thought to saving them with size in mind on my presets. The last brush gives me an effect very similar in feel to painting Alla Prima with a no thinners brush with a large Filbert, adjusting it's size you can get down to details with it and then swapping to the 4 Hard you can really get in and detail a painting out and do full paintings with just it and the 4 and a Palette knife or two. I don't have any Palette Knife settings to share as I've not got that to feel like how I use my traditional palette knife as of yet, but I'm working on it slowly, much more slowly as I don't do too much with a knife outside of mixing my colors on a palette.

Customizing ArtRage is such a pleasure and joy to do, it's simple powerful tools react very predictably if you understand the settings available and provide a very authentic painting experience. I hope you like these brush settings, included in the name of each brush is a minor note to myself as to it's base settings to allow for quick changes if you know what you need to adjust.

Edit: for some reason my link failed, but I'll figure out some way to get them up here for everyone :)

86047
86048
86049
86050
86051

- Delo

[Delofasht]

And Alla Prima!

86052

There, if that all works out everyone should have some well defined individual brush presets that react consistently and predictably, I strongly suggest tweaking these presets to your tastes as they are heavily tweaked to my tastes and for my particular tools and style of painting. Enjoy, if you have any questions about these please feel free to ask, I put a lot of thought into the settings for these brushes and how I flow in painting, many of them have multiple uses and can do a wide range of things as needed with some creative usage. Good luck, have fun!

[jmac]

Delofasht...These brushes are REALLY NICE! Thank you for sharing them with the group. I wish I had your understanding of brush creation and the preset adjustments. It would really make using ArtRage more enjoyable and more comfortable. But it confusing to me...once again, thanks for sharing these.

[Delofasht]

You are most welcome, I've had some extensive experience with some other software and learning all the ins and outs of various settings in them. The wording is a bit different in each and it took me a few hours to correlate the information against what I was seeing happening when trying various settings. I hope they serve you well! :)

[Enug]

Thanks so much for sharing these brushes - I have downloaded them and look forward to trying them out. I will be looking out for the palette presets too - no pressure!:cool::cool:

[justjean]

Thank you for the brushes

[Delofasht]

@justjean, You are most welcome, I hope they are easy to understand and use for you.

[hinket]

Hey Delofasht,
Thank you for sharing your oil brush presets.

Had fun trying them out. :)
Not exactly a landscape, though. :D

[Delofasht]

Hinket, glad to hear you like them, they are probably the most basic brush presets I could make while focusing on very specific effects that are all different enough from each other to provide me a quick range of different effects that apply to my process. If you would like to know more about my process of using these brush presets I will be making a video on Youtube on it in a couple months, I'm developing a script for it after I finish my current landscape painting in which I will have a demonstration painting scripted during each 'pass' of my process and will put some commentary regarding the what and why. (probably something simple like a pear. . . because you can never go wrong with a pear shape)

I dream of the day when I can use a mixing palette and a jar of thinner digitally in which I control how thin or thick my paint is by dipping in with different depths and mixing paints and such by hand while having options of which brush to use and why. Then I wouldn't need brush presets so much just know what I need to achieve and load up my brush manually with the right amount of paint, thinner, and control the edge of a bristle brush that I'm using (sometimes I paint with only one tip of a flat brush pushing in to make triangular shapes). Some of these things just aren't controllable currently and haven't been programmed yet, it might be on their list of things to improve but they have a very large collection of tools that people would like to see so I'm sure they might get around to it eventually.

- Delo

[Essemmgee]

Thank you Delo

[BushcraftOnFire]

Thanks so much Delo.. Will look forward to trying them out!

[Delofasht]

I have put up a script on my DeviantArt account for download if you would like to see my using the Block In Brush to sketch my cat from a reference photo I have of her. It shows how I basically use this as a sketching tool, I will be making a follow up blocking in more and more areas with it before moving on to the 2nd pass and working with the next brush, I will try to make scripts for each of these picking up where I leave off with the previous one so everyone can see the process, and just how much actually erase and such too. Most of the entire painting will end up taking place on one layer and I doubt I will actually finish it to a 5th Pass as it's just to show how I use these brush presets. When i am done making the scripts, I hope to make them into a video using screen capture software and then recording some audio to play over it while it plays so people can hear about what I was thinking while I was doing it all.

I wish there was a way I could edit the script in ArtRage to add annotations after recording, that way I don't have to think about that while I'm actually painting, could go back and do it afterward, but that's okay, doing it in audio after the math is just as good for me.

Block In (http://fav.me/d8p4pno)

- Delo

[Delofasht]

Here is the second installment still with just the block in brush, this completes the entire process I'd use the Block In brush for and maybe a bit beyond. This allows me a very solid base with which to build up color variety and texture as I move forward from here though and will be using this base to correct form perspective and proportions.

I definitely spend longer and do more in the block in stage of my paintings than most others. The script for the painting can be found here:

Block In 2 (http://fav.me/d8p4zia)

There is a glitch in the script and it misses some stuff but I'll have included the painting in the script to pick up where it left off on the first one and will be doing the same in the next script so you will pick up the missing pieces there if you'd like to see me move into the next brush preset and how I use it.

- Delo

[HannahRage]

I wish there was a way I could edit the script in ArtRage to add annotations after recording, that way I don't have to think about that while I'm actually painting, could go back and do it afterward, but that's okay, doing it in audio after the math is just as good for me.


If you're up for a bit more experimentation, it's possible to manually edit the script files.
http://www.artrage.com/files/artrage_advancedscriptingguide.pdf

[Delofasht]

Thank you Hannah, for the link. It will take quite some time for me to absorb the language as it's been more than a decade since I dabbled in programming, but I think I should manage to figure out how to link the scripts to create a continuous painting from start to finish at some point and exclude or include the base painting at intervals to fill in some of the areas that might be missed in the script (with enough time I might be able to fix the scripting errors due to my pauses, but I'm certain that won't be for a year or more, as scripting would be more of a hobby for me).

[Delofasht]

Next up I explore the Build Up Brush Preset, here you can find my entire 2nd Pass, I'm never concerned with 100% accuracy or coverage in any given stage as it's merely meant for me to build on top of. I put in a bit of the background here, the reason for now instead of earlier is that I didn't need the information earlier as I wasn't exploring the color relationships yet merely placing where about things would be located, I also haven't gone about my normal method of increasing the resolution of my paintings for these tutorials on how I use my brushes yet as it's not until after this stage that I will really want to have good control over my brushes, both for texturing and for cleaning up. The reason I use these low resolution bases for my paintings is that they allow my computer to run very smoothly with larger brush sizes which I don't use TOO often, but when I do I want to be able to do it easily.

The idea behind each of these brush presets so far and even in the next step is to remain fairly loose, you can see in this one how I starting really picking on details, which honestly was me just noodling around, it is very unlikely to be used in the final work, or even remain visible at all in the next step (the messy step). This step is about furthering the color variety, pushing the form a bit further and creating depth in the piece overall, I also use a bit of palette knife to push things around in this step to create some interesting color in a few places, but mostly this is all just brush work. I do a lot of palette mixing off to the side as I'm moving around from place to place.

In the next step, I will be destroying some of the work I did in this step. There is a reason for it though, I want to get some interesting texture going on and even more color and variety, and further refine the light a bit more and create interesting thick brush strokes here or there, on the Broken Color brush step I do more on the fly brush adjustments than nearly any other step, I will be adjusting the stiffness of the bristles and pressure quite a bit as I progress through that step and should have that out sometime tomorrow for everyone to view.

Hope this was helpful and good luck and enjoy!

Build Up (http://fav.me/d8pi1hm)

You can download the script from my DeviantArt website to see it in use yourself. :)

- Delo

[HannahRage]

If you're noticing errors in the scripts, can you send them to us at [email protected] with as many details as possible? We try and fix these sort of things on an ongoing basis.

[Delofasht]

Only issue I had with any of the scripts was where I paused it and forgot to turn it back on before I continued, I picked a color and made a couple strokes, backed up unpaused pressed play and continued but forgot to change the color back and it recorded different color than what I was supposed to be using. Not really an issue with the script so much as my recording failure, the other script issue I had fixed itself by rerecording it and I saved over the file. If I do have any further issues though will definitely email it to you all. Thanks for all your help, the scripting information looks to be very promising too, I'm a dozen or so pages in and I might need to look up some application examples at some point, but I'm seeing the basic structure and starting to get some idea of how the code language is assembled.

Thanks again for all your help Hannah.

- Delo

[Enug]

Delo, I had some issue with the scripts. The first was fine and I could easily see and follow what you were doing. However, scripts 2 and 3 had the canvas obscured by the reference photo and scrap. When I stopped the script I could move the ref and scraps to my 2nd monitor but alas, I couldn't start the script again in that format - I had to go back and restart from the beginning and unfortunately the canvas was obscured again.

Could it be something to do with you using two monitors? Here is what I see.

86184

[Delofasht]

Oh noes! Yeah it probably does have something to do with my 2 monitors. . . and I have no idea how to fix that. Can you try putting your Artrage in Workbench mode before starting the script? Maybe it'll place the references differently, I didn't even consider that my reference would be shown, which of course would make sense since it's part of the painting. Oh my, well it's time for me to start doing some research then too.

It might have something to do with me having saved the painting into the script too which I did to connect one and clean up any missing details or errors that might have occurred due to me pausing and unpausing the scrips (sometimes I forget to start it again and miss some strokes). I would love to actually have a bit more navigation while a script is running, some sort of visual script editor program would make utilizing these much much easier. Like in my latest one there is some issues with a palette knife not functioning properly but I don't think I actually had any trouble with the palette knife in some areas, but I may have paused and forgotten to start again near there too. It's tricky to remember and that's why I'm going to have to actually check my scripting code at some point, maybe I can find a way to turn off all windows except the painting itself. . . or turn on the settings window so you can see the paint settings happening and know when to pause. mmmm.... this is going to be a time consuming hobby for sure. :p

[Enug]

Having AR in Workbench mode wouldn't have any effect as I am not using my AR window when I'm running scripts - I'm seeing yours and I can't make any alterations while the script is running.

[Delofasht]

It makes a difference for me when I run them. Try it, change the mode then run the script. Still going to have the reference window I assume though. :/ Will have to fix it somehow if I can.

[gxhpainter2]

Thanks Delo, these are a great little set of brushes, so expect to see traces of them in subsequent abstracts !

[philippecmartin]

Thank you!

Regards,

Philippe

[Delofasht]

You are most welcome guys. I've recently been toying with some of the settings, if I can get them tuned just right I will release an update for my brushes reflecting the newer setting while having the same general effect, the difference will be in their handling as you build up through the layers if using my approach (and thus why I have them numbered). The newer settings seem to be a bit more forgiving to me, but until I know they are working the way I want for each layer I am reluctant to post them, need to make sure they flow just right. :) Going to finish my current painting that I'm using to test the new settings (Approaching Harbor), when it's done if I like everything I will update the files here and on my DA site for everyone.

[Claudine]

Really very useful and nice to use. I'm looking forward to seeing your future presets. Thank you for sharing your marvels. :)

[swansong]

Thank you, I love these brushes,

[Delofasht]

Claudine & swansong, you are most welcome. I hope they help with your paintings :)

[damasocl]

Can you teach me how to open a file .prs?... please.-

[HannahRage]

Can you teach me how to open a file .prs?... please.-

You don't open the file directly, what you do is you tell ArtRage to look at it for the settings. You either:

1) Save the .prs file into the correct Presets folder under Documents > ArtRage Paintings > Custom Content

2) Open ArtRage 4, go to the correct tool, > Presets > menu > Import Presets to Collection > browse for the .prs file.

[annlou]

Brilliant thanks

[LindaG]

Recently found this wonderful ArtRage 5.5, so I'm at the beginning. Very familiar with Photoshop and Painter, and ArtRage is now my current focus, discovery stage. Was recommended to try your brushes. Thank you so much for sharing. LindaG

[dichthuatmid]

they are probably the most basic brush presets I could make while focusing on very specific effects that are all different enough from each other to provide me a quick range of different effects that apply to my process. If you would like to know more about my process of using these brush presets I will be making a video on Youtube on it in a couple months, I'm developing a script for it after I finish my current landscape painting in which I will have a demonstration painting scripted during each 'pass' of my process and will put some commentary regarding the what and why. (probably something simple like a pear. . . because you can never go wrong with a pear shape)