Enormous untapped potential – ArtRage Review

ArtRage on iOS (iPad Pro) is promising in many ways but often fails to deliver in the more nuanced areas. It is absolutely GREAT if you are using the OIL Brush (which is amazing), and don’t really interact with the other tools like the Watercolor Brush or Pastels. But even with the Oil Brush it is nearly impossible to control the degree of blending to other colors. For instance, if you have painted with a medium tone color and then want to add a strong highlight tone on top, you will be severely limited to the degree that it will lighten, unless you use the Insta-Dry, which lays down a flat non-blending color on top, and then you have to switch back to the Oil brush to blend it in somewhat at the edges. However, I don’t to give the impression that this app is bad because it’s not, it’s just VERY limited when compared to other apps (like Procreate). At the time of writing this (September 2020) this app has not been updated by the developer for TWO years. They seem to have spent more time enhancing the desktop version of the app ($75) rather than modestly improving the iOS version. What ArtRage does really well is layers and their degrees of transparency; merging layers, multiple undo’s, the Pencil as something unto itself, and using the roller to lay flat colors then awesomely blending them together with the Palette Knife. The pastel tool is lackluster with poor definition and the paint tube is just a gimmick. But I sincerely hope the developer will improve the blending of colors when using the oil brush, and combining those colors with the watercolors. This is an app with enormous untapped potential.
Review by ROC-889 on ArtRage.