Another comparison

I've been doing some more experimental art for another web site and wasn't indending to put any on this one. However, I think it might be useful to show what I've been up to. I painted this image in Art Rage 2 in about 10-30 minutes. I wasn't keeping track of time, but it was a lot of fun as it wasn't serious and I got to play with the mixing of paints and so on.


Then my mum came over (she teaches art) and I asked her to show me how I might get the same picture done in acrylic. I tried to match it as close as possible to get a good comparison of methods.

The acrylic painting had all sorts of problems.

First of all, the black outlines were put in last, which I didn't like as I had nothing to base my background on. I could have put the black outline in first, but it would have soon disappeared under the paint. In AR2 I simply put the black outlines on the top layer and painted on the layer below.

Secondly: Matching the colour took a very long time indeed, and it was still off by quite a way. We used quite a lot of paint too and it was hard to judge how much to mix.

Third: Even using acrylics it took quite a while for the last layer to dry so that the next layer could be put on. In AR2, you can select quick dry paint if you want, or just jump to another layer.

Fourth: Mixing real paint on the canvas seemed to much harder than in AR2, although my experience of oils I remember being better than acrylics.

Fifth: No Undo. If I made a mistake in AR2, I can easily go back. No such luck in the real world.

Sixth: The colours just aren't as punchy.

Plus, with AR2 I have all the brushes I need just a gesture away, in real life, I only have a few.

In all the acrylic + Marker pen painting took around 4 hours compared with 10-30 minutes in AR2.

So my second comparison still makes me think AR2 is the better tool for the job. Unfortunately it's very slow on my machine at resolutions much bigger than screen resolution, I'm hoping this will be fixed in the new version coming out soon.