Drawing tablet

[firstdefence]

Agreed you need to be making a fair amount of money to justify Corel Painter, ArtRage is also fun to use and more intuitive. I have FlamePainter by the same company that make Rebelle and I've heard it is very nice and quite realistic especially regarding watercolours; paint running etc so makes the whole experience real, the only way they could improve would be to have a set of realistic stylus brushes, then it would feel so real. 

[iconoclast]

Rebelle has this cool features to let watercolors drip and bleed. I would like to have something like that. To be honest, I always tried to prevent things like dripping and bleeding (or even visible brush strokes) in analogue painting, and it really drove me mad if my Airbrush sometimes suddenly spitted and created dirty spots on my paintings. But now that I paint digitally, I sometimes miss this dirty opportunities. It's of course not a problem to copy a spot to an image, and I already created some brushes especially for things like that, but it is not the same, because those spots somehow don't feel honest and I always have to change the brush to place aimed spots on the paintings. In my opinion, even digital painting should be as spontaneous, immediate and handmade as possible. E.G. HR Giger used this annoying deficiencies in analogue painting, like spitting Airbrushes, in a genius way as stylistic devices.

One thing that still keeps me from giving Rebelle a try (there have been some acceptable special offers in the past) is that the additional content they offer (brushes, canvases...) are so expensive. It gives me the feeling of this goddamn In-App-Sales, that drive you into ruin. And it's not clear to me if you can create your own ones as easy as I use to do it for ArtRage, Affinity Photo and others.

Flamepainter, Inspirit and Amberlight look interesting too. But I'm not sure if I would use them very often. By the way, have you ever tried Fractal Generators like Apophysis, Fractron9000, Wonderland or Mandelbulber? They are all free and open source, and I used them in the past to create brushes, canvases and background textures. GIMP has some Fractal Generators in it's "Render"-category too. Really useful to create content.

[firstdefence]

10 hours ago, iconoclast said:

have you ever tried Fractal Generators like Apophysis, Fractron9000, Wonderland or Mandelbulber?

Yes I'm all Mac so Apopthysis is out but Chaotica, Mandelbulber and mandelbulber 3D I use, I also have a nice fractal generator on my Phone called Frax and you can see a short video on my profile of a Frax video. 

[Alfred]

20 hours ago, iconoclast said:

ArtRage costs 40 € at the moment (normally 80 €).

https://www.artrage.com (Easter sale ends 21st April.)

11 hours ago, iconoclast said:

Rebelle has this cool features to let watercolors drip and bleed.

https://www.escapemotions.com/experiments/rebelle

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, firstdefence said:

I also have a nice fractal generator on my Phone called Frax and you can see a short video on my profile of a Frax video.

Here’s a quick demo of Frax on my iPad:

[firstdefence]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

Here’s a quick demo of Frax on my iPad:

 

FullSizeRender.MOV 168.25 MB · 0 downloads

Super cool app isn't it.

[Alfred]

5 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Super cool app isn't it.

Well, we obviously both think so!

[jackamus]

12 hours ago, Alfred said:

https://www.artrage.com (Easter sale ends 21st April.)

https://www.escapemotions.com/experiments/rebelle

I've been following the tablet comments and ask this question:

I decide which table and pen to buy and then choose the software I want to use on it OR can does the tablet already come with its own software and that I can add other apps?

[Alfred]

18 minutes ago, jackamus said:

I decide which table and pen to buy and then choose the software I want to use on it OR can does the tablet already come with its own software and that I can add other apps?

Both! My first tablet was the same small Wacom tablet that Serif sold as a rebadged version. I mostly used it with DrawPlus, but it came with a limited version of ArtRage.

[firstdefence]

If an app can use a mouse it can probably use a tablet and stylus. 

[iconoclast]

1 hour ago, jackamus said:

I've been following the tablet comments and ask this question:

I decide which table and pen to buy and then choose the software I want to use on it OR can does the tablet already come with its own software and that I can add other apps?

Sometimes the tablet distributors offer their tablets in combination with painting apps. E.G. some Wacom tablets come with a version of ArtRage. But you have to be careful, often those are only limited Demo-Versions of the software. A friend of mine purchased a Cintiq that came with a Demo-Version of Z-Brush, which is a very cool and expensive 2D- and 3D-Painting and Modelling-Software. My Cintiq didn't contain any painting software. Only the driver software to adjust the tablet. My old Wacom Bamboo came with some small apps for painting and vector graphic. But they were not really worth talking about..

[jackamus]

Thanks for the warning.

[iconoclast]

2 hours ago, firstdefence said:

If an app can use a mouse it can probably use a tablet and stylus. 

Not implicitly. At least the pressure sensitivity is a feature that is not always supported, even not by all graphic apps. In some apps it must be activated first in the preferences of the apps. E.G. in GIMP and Inkscape. At least in the past. I'm not sure if you still needs to do it today. But it is easy to do anyway.

[iconoclast]

14 hours ago, Alfred said:

Here’s a quick demo of Frax on my iPad:

 

Very nice! Are there any opportunities to manipulate the shapes of the fractals?

[Alfred]

4 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

Very nice! Are there any opportunities to manipulate the shapes of the fractals?

Not that I’m aware of. What kind of manipulation did you have in mind?

[iconoclast]

25 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Not that I’m aware of. What kind of manipulation did you have in mind?

Not easy to depict with my rudimental english. I had something like in Apophysis, Wonderland or Mandelbulber in mind, where you can even change the forms of the fractals fluently with several settings. I'm not an expert in fractals and math, but as far as I know there are apps that are simply fractal explorers, that show certain fractal shapes (on my Linux-Laptop, I have e.G. installed Xaos, which is a fractal explorer), and you only can zoom in and out and change the colors. And there are fractal editors like Apophysis, Mandelbulber... The last ones are more useful, e.G. to create brushes and textures.

[henryanthony]

2 hours ago, jackamus said:

I've been following the tablet comments and ask this question:

I decide which table and pen to buy and then choose the software I want to use on it OR can does the tablet already come with its own software and that I can add other apps?

Following on with another question: Is it not true that the tablets and pens discussed here should be able to be used with the drawing and painting tools in Affinity Photo and Design? Then other programs can be added as deemed desired?

[iconoclast]

1 minute ago, henryanthony said:

Following on with another question: Is it not true that the tablets and pens discussed here should be able to be used with the drawing and painting tools in Affinity Photo and Design? Then other programs can be added as deemed desired?

Yes, of course the Affinity apps support pressure sensitive graphic tablets.

[Alfred]

8 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

Not easy to depict with my rudimental english. I had something like in Apophysis, Wonderland or Mandelbulber in mind, where you can even change the forms of the fractals fluently with several settings. I'm not an expert in fractals and math, but as far as I know there are apps that are simply fractal explorers, that show certain fractal shapes, and you only can zoom in and out and change the colors. And there are fractal editors like Apophysis, Mandelbulber... The last ones are more useful, e.G. to create brushes and textures.

No, it isn’t a fractal editor in that sense. I think it’s all just the Mandelbrot set, without even an option to switch to the Julia set.

[iconoclast]

1 minute ago, Alfred said:

No, it isn’t a fractal editor in that sense. I think it’s all just the Mandelbrot set, without even an option to switch to the Julia set.

OK, but nice anyway.

[iconoclast]

1 hour ago, henryanthony said:

Following on with another question: Is it not true that the tablets and pens discussed here should be able to be used with the drawing and painting tools in Affinity Photo and Design? Then other programs can be added as deemed desired?

In addition to what I said above - to prevent confusion and frustration - you should know, that the pressure sensitivity can easily be switched on and off in Photo and Designer. In Photo it is a small button, in Designer a small menu in the context bar, at the top of the GUI. Usually both are switched off after you start the apps.

[firstdefence]

51 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

OK, but nice anyway.

Have you checked out JWildfire: https://jwildfire.overwhale.com/ that's pretty cool, Java based. Tip the Launcher.jar file is in the lib folder.

Few Fractal flames
 

[iconoclast]

4 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Have you checked out JWildfire: https://jwildfire.overwhale.com/ that's pretty cool, Java based. Tip the Launcher.jar file is in the lib folder.

Few Fractal flames
 

Very interesting. Thanks for the hint!

[jackamus]

On 4/7/2023 at 10:40 AM, PaulEC said:

Well, as Jacamus said: "I've just had a look at their website and I'm quite impressed especially with the price - seems too cheap! However I can't find any detail about its size or detailed spec." it sounded like he might think it was a tablet with painting features built in!

(And yes, of course it's much better to use it with a tablet, I was just trying to make the point that it is an app, installed like any other, it is not dependant on having a tablet in order to install it.)

Having read much of what you guys have had to say about tablets and their apps my final question is:

If I get a tablet and use say Artrage would I be able to upload an image of an unfinished acrylic painting that I started and finish painting it on the tablet?

[markw]

Yes, ArtRage is totally independent of the input devise you are using, it’s just an app like the Affinity ones and installed accordingly on your system.
In AR you can open any standard image files; jpeg, TIFF, PNG, etc… in the same way as you would in any other image editing/painting apps.
If you have already created a canvas in AR and you want to import an image into that you can use; File > ‘Import Image File To Layer’ or Drag & Drop the image file onto the canvas. In the dialog that opens again choose ‘Import Image File To Layer’.
When you are ready with your new hardware I would say the best thing for you to do is download the free trial version of AR and see how you get on with it. Personally I love AR but each to their own!
The demo version is AR6 but all the main features of the retail ArtRage Vitae are present: https://www.artrage.com/demos/
Like here they have a helpful forum where you can ask questions, etc…
Maybe see you over there🙂