(Stencils) Realistc Watercolor Presets for ArtRage

[nekomata]

✨ ✨ ✨ Google Drive folder link ✨ ✨ ✨

click "download all", unzip the file anywhere after downloading, and copy the .JPG files into a separate new folder inside of the artrage resource directory.
(you can access it by opening "stencils" panel inside of artrage, and going to the "stencils folder" context menu button.)




why I'm sharing this:

there’re quite a few people discovering artrage in the recent months on this board coming with a background in using either traditional media, or other painting and imagemaking applications. one of the subjects I see coming up repeatedly is using watercolor brushes in artrage.

actually, a tool for that medium has been added some time ago, but in artrage it operates a bit differently from other natural media painting programs. it might feel intimidating or hard to start with for a fresh user. there’re also comparisons to the (very impressive) running water simulations that the higher end desktop applications learned to produce in the recent years.

however, the more complex and a very robust toolset to achieve realistic looking paintings in artrage is already built in, it simply relies on doing a little bit of preparation work outside of the program.

in my case, my watercolor process relies on having intermediate technical skills with the medium itself, a collection of very good art papers, and a quite awful office scanner I have at my disposal. thanks to covid, affordable art-grade scanners in my region have been out of stock for some time, and a conventional camera doesn’t capture the paper depth and edge nuance same way a scanner does.

I am sharing this set of custom stencils to assist your watercolor painting creation with artrage to show how versatile the application is when you take time to know it.



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for new users, please refer to those as your free general purpose starting tutorials for the watercolor tool:
https://www.artrage.com/?s=watercolor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsgwbHMaqjY

general purpose manual for using palette knife:
https://www.artrage.com/manuals/natu...palette-knife/

a manual for using stencils:
https://www.artrage.com/manuals/grap...sign/stencils/

you can also take a look at a general, non-watercolor specific illustration process tutorial by Nick Harris (part I • • • part II • • • part III )

this approach works best on a desktop or a laptop with a physical keyboard, you will need to habitualize using «space», «cmd/ctrl» and «alt» keys together with the mouse to learn to skew, rotate, and scale stencils on the go. if you're using alternative input devices, such as gaming pads, in your process, you should be good too.

save your files often! stencils are fast with most painting tools, but their stability will depend on your system configuration.

real watercolor over dry paper produces crisp results when drying: export your paintings as .png, and use a sharpen filter over the result (artrage, to my surprise, does not have image sharpening) - it will make paint edges more real.
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included are a collection of 20 «blot», 5 «drip» and 10 «wash» stencils.

• «blot» stencils provide sampled watercolor dabs - single strokes, multiple strokes, clear and crisp paint blots; they are varied in shape and are the smallest in size (between 500 and 1000 px largest size; artrage will upscale them several times in a beautiful, clean way if required to.)

• «drip» stencils are tall and narrow, varying between ~1500 and ~3000 pixels tall; use them to quickly add paint drips. I feel like people get carried away by how running digital water looks in other apps - it's right there for you now.

• «wash» stencils are the largest out of them, those are used to quickly cover massive paper space with textured, thinned out, realistic watercolor washes. the biggest wash I'm providing is 4500 px. wide.


remember that stencils are invertable (you can invert them on the go with the context menu, and give fancy edge treatment to your paintings.) you can use multiple stencils in one image, and stencils support all the tools you are accustomed with - not just watercolor.

for «wash» and «blot» stencils, I recommend approaching your process in layers, duplicating layers several times (cmd+J/ctrl+J) as you paint to quickly build up paint density - they are very delicate and transparent.
locking in layer opacity after you’ve painted in the base pigment (I have cmd+L set up as a custom shortcut for layer transparency lock) will allow you to paint in color variation without displacing the painted area shapes.

you can use literally any tool that you are familiar with because stencil technology is universal.
in my examples provided here I use watercolor, gloop pen, airbrushes for watercolors, but using custom brush tools or even oil brush tool with enough thinner will produce realistic and beautiful imitation of painting in gouache. you can mix thick paint mediums together too.




a common sense request: feel free to use what I share for any artistic purposes of your own, but link back to this thread, not the direct download link, if you plan on sharing my content, to bring more people to the website.

I would love to see your art posted here if you have found my effort helpful for what you create, and if you are active on social media, please give artrage a shout-out and show some new art of yours.