I'm back

[abby-helen]

Happy New Year to all.

2020 was a harsh speedbump for me. I spent time in 3 different hospitals, all because my sciatic nerve misbehaved.
On my road to recovery I had to use a wheel-chair for over a month. Now I'm mobile with the help of a cane.

During my convalescence, I felt so fortunate to have digital art to play with.

I finally said my goodbye to Corel Painter. I got tired of their continuous crashes. Now I work with ArtRage and only AR.

The beauty of this program is enormous.

Abby-Helen

[markw]

Hello Abby-Helen and welcome back!:)
Sounds like you have had even more reasons to be happy at seeing the back of 2020 and saying “good riddance” to it!
Yes, breath deep and let ArtRage sooth and calm you…

[abby-helen]

Thank you Mark for that warm welcome.
Sometimes the harsh lessons are the best ones.

I have a AR question. Up to now I've been working with the oil brush.
I like it fine but wanted to try something different. I'm trying the
watercolor brush, its a whole different animal.

How can I make the colors "run?" There must be a procedure
that I have not found.

Thank you for looking into this

Abby-Helen

[markw]

Are you referring to the slight “runs” at the bottom of the background in my Sun Bear painting (https://forums.artrage.com/showthread.php?55588-Just-some-Penguins-And-other-animals&p=535965#post535965):confused:
They’er easy to do with the Warp tool in AR6. I just dragged the paint around using the Easy Smear preset mostly.
If you’ve not found the Warp tool in AR6, it’s hidden under ‘Filters’ in AR’s Menu; Edit > Filters > Warp…
And it’s key command is Shift+W to activate it or did I set that:confused: If that isn’t it’s default key, it can be easily set to whatever you want in AR’s ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’ panel. This time the Warp tool is hidden under ‘Panel Commands’, go figure!
Hope that was helpful:confused: :)

[abby-helen]

Yes Mark, that is exactly what I mean. I too want to use it for a back ground.

I love your bear and I took a screen shot of it to remind me of your fine detailed
and lovely atmospheric background.

I'll play with the "warp" and add the palette knife, hopefully to get the
"look" I want.
Thanks again,

Abby-Helen

[abby-helen]

Mark, I was working in trying a new method in water color , warp and knife tools-
I get the message from AR= "An error occurred on attempting to create an object.
AR could not create the requested menu, you may need to restart the application."

So I did that but what does it mean?

The next message= "AR quit unexspectedly " It's the 1st. time AR has crashed
on me. What did I do wrong?

Thanks for looking into this.

Abby-Helen

[markw]

Yes, that is unusual :confused:
I can’t be sure, but it sounds like AR was unable to complete an internal call, maybe to form part of the interface considering the reference to a “requested menu”.
These hiccups can very occasionally happen with any software and tend to be one-off events and cured by a restart.
If you are able to restart AR and it works as expected then I would ignore it for now.
But if it continues to happen then there may be other issues going on within AR.

[abby-helen]

Thank you Mark for your prompt reply.

I did shut down AR and tried to restart. Now it won't open. I keep getting
the same [An error has occured ] message.

I just now got a new message. "Bad parameter has been passed."

I still cannot open AR.

Please help.

Abby-Helen

[markw]

Thank you Mark for your prompt reply.

I did shut down AR and tried to restart. Now it won't open. I keep getting
the same [An error has occured ] message.

I just now got a new message. "Bad parameter has been passed."

I still cannot open AR.

Please help.

Abby-Helen

Oh, that’s not good:(
As the problem is persisting I have one suggestion you could try. It might be a corrupt preference file.
Which OS are you on Mac or Windows and which version? Also which version of ArtRage do you have?

Your forum avatar suggests that you are on a Mac? And are you using ArtRage6?
If yes to these two, then follow this path: /Users/YourNameHere/Library/Application Support/Ambient Design/ArtRage/ArtRage6.prs
And move the ArtRage6.prs file to your Desktop for the moment.
Now try launching ArtRage. AR will automatically generate a new .prs file as it launches and you will have set the UI back to it’s factory default.
Hopefully all will be good now but if you are still unable to launch AR and still getting those warnings I would suggest you contact Ambient Design directly about this issue here: [email protected]
Do let us know if the above worked or not. Fingers crossed...

[abby-helen]

Mark, yes I'm on iMac-High Sierra-AR v6.8-Wacom Cintiq 12.

I've tried to close downAR, also tried to delete it and restart it from
Mac Applications. Nothing brought the original AR back.

I tried to follow your instructions, nothing changed, except I
am more confused. What's next?

I can get a New Painting set up in AR from "untitled" and from here
I've tried all the tools-they work-but "File" won't drop down. Nor will
the messages go away.

Did AR mess up things by me using Edit>Filter>Warp? Or because
I placed to high a brush % on it?

I greatly appreciate your help,
Abby-Helen

[markw]

Well this hasn't been such a good start to your ArtRage new year has it :(:(:(
If removing the ArtRage6.prs file hasn’t worked then you could try deleting AR itself and reinstalling a fresh copy of the app. But if you do try this then you would still be wise to delete the ArtRage6.prs file again as part of this process.

But I would again strongly advise contacting Ambient Design directly at [email protected] with the full details of this problem and the steps you have tried so far to solve it. You could even point then to this forum thread to follow the story so far.
They made the app and have a far better understanding of it’s dark inner workings than I :rolleyes:
But it really sounds to me that some internal AR file has been corrupted, but apart from the ArtRage6.prs file, I’m not sure what other, user fixable, file might be the cause :confused:

As far as this being “your fault” by misusing the Warp tool then I would say no. Fear not!:)
With any of the tools in AR you can type in sizes over their maximums and all that happens is that they default to the permitted max size.
So don’t worry it’s not you who has messed up but your computer that’s dropped the ball! They will do that to us sometimes!

Sorry I haven’t been more help with this but pleas do post back here once it’s sorted out with the cause and solution. The info may prove useful to others in future.

[abby-helen]

I did send a request, the whole problem/question to "support AR" along with an outline
of the conversation on this forum.

So now I'm waiting to hear what the officionadoes advise.

I will keep posting when I find out what's going on.

Abby-Helen

[abby-helen]

Thank you Mark for your good advice. I finally got AR running again.

I did get in touch with Ambient and Andy was most helpful. He didn't say
what caused this weird crash but walked me to the path and to a remedy.

So whoopi, back to painting.

Abby-Helen

[Stephen Lo Piano]

How goes abby-helen. Good to see writing that you seem to be recovering. I know how health issues can take a toll on your life, had personal health problems myself for a couple years leading into 2020. During my recovery phase time periods when they let me out of the hospital for a while I found digital painting to be a psychological positive thing in dealing with my problems and passing the time while still in discomfort and pain, giving me a sense of being able to do something worth while.