(Messege me and i will help you with anything involving ArtRage... including how to use tools and creating different effects with them. how to blend paints and colours etc.)

First of all here are some helpful hints to get you started!:

- ArtRage is easy to use once you know what you're doing. When you know all the features and their compenents you can create any effect imaginable! You just need to get started on the basics. Now, if you are a beginner, new art programs can be daunting, but ArtRage is simple when you know what everything does. You can have layers (like in photoshop) which can be really handy (and are a perk of going digital). You can change the properties of these layers and the paper settings 9normal paper, cell, blackboard etc) The Colour picker is in the bottom right corner, with a scale for how metalic you want the colour. Keep in mind though that metalic colours and non-metalic colours do not blend well. But you can get a nice effect with metalic colours. Try it out. see what you can do.

- ArtRage has a range of tools for you to use just like if you were sitting at a desk with paper and paints. Its an awesome program to create 'painted' effects. First off, you've got your paintbrush, which obviously you can slide the scale to make it bigger or smaller. You will also notice a small tool bar on the left hand side. here you can change how 'watery' the paint is amoung other things. (so the paint isnt always oil-paint thick) You can change how much paint is on your brush. (the paint on the brush will 'run dry' so just take the brush off the surface and and replace) Anyway, play around with the settings here, and find a style you like.

- Other tools include a pencil, which you can change all the settings of with the same left hand bar (you'll notice it will change to the 'pencil' settings.) You can change the tilt angle and the pressure and so on. Play around here and see what you can do.

- The 'colour chooser'... is the same as in Photoshop. it is located 2 under the chalk and the paintbrush.

- The palette knife comes in very handy to blend paint colours together. you can change the size of this and everythig too. The smaller the knife the smoother the blend though. but play around with this and see what effects you can do. it acts just like a 'real' palette knife.

- Have a go with the other tools too. There is a spary paint pen, an erasor (will erase anything), glitter (looks best in metalic colours), Paint tube, Crayon, Felt pen, chalk and paint roller (if your computer is a little bit slow, this may lag a bit)... Play around with the settings on all these and see what pretty pictures you can come up with.

- ok... other stuff to consider is the stencil tool. Handy if your more into graphics than i am... (i never use this lol) i DO occasionaly use the 'trace' tool though. At the bottom of the screen, on the tool bar, where the navigate and zoom is, is the trace icon. choose any image you want to trace and you can change how big it is and the opacity etc. another handy thing (and this is the last one, i promise!) is the 'Reference' tool, right next to the trace button. Choose the image you want and a small version of it will appear somewhere on the screen. You can move it about, zoom in and out and move it around internally. You can, if you want, reset the internal image scale back to normal after you've zoomed in and stuff too.

anyway... i can't think of anything else to mention. hopeefully you can get a good start with this. if you think of something i should add, or if you hav any questions, please, dont hesitate to ask me! ^_^