Watercolor design is very popular for many type of projects and with Rebelle software by Escape Motions you can create realistic digital watercolors. But Rebelle isn't just another painting software. The fluid flow of the watercolor simulation is so realistic that you will think it's the real thing and the color blending mimics traditional painting media.

Before digital art software, I was a traditional watercolor and ink artist. For over 15 years, I've concentrated on writing articles and tutorials about digital art, design and animation here at BellaOnline.com. Although I would never give up my computer now, I miss the traditional painting experience.

Although Corel Painter has been around for some time, it is a very robust, and therefore, very complicated software. I decided to search for a software that would imitate the behavior of real watercolor paints on canvas, be easy to use, work on the Mac and not be too expensive. I found several free and reasonably priced painting software. They were all good in their own ways but I was looking for something that really imitated or simulated traditional watercolor diffusion.

Rebelle 2 was the best of all the software that I tested. Lucky for me, version 2 had just been released, with some great upgrades for watercolor and acrylic digital painting. First, I experimented with the online Rebelle demo. This is a great marketing tool for Escape Motions, as I was so impressed with this online demo that I decided to download the desktop version. This was a full-featured version of the software with only a few features disabled, such as the Save feature.

What's New in Rebelle 2

Don't be fooled by the uncluttered workspace (see screenshot). Rebelle is packed with features. In this and the next article, let's talked about some of the newest features, concentrating on watercolor painting.

New Brush Engine

There are several preset brushes (see screenshot), including Watercolor, Acrylic, Pastel, Pencil, Ink Pen, Marker, Airbrush and Eraser. Each brush has its own set of shapes, such as the watercolor Liner, Filbert, Sponge and Splat (see screenshot). In the Properties panel, you have slider controls for Size, Pressure, Loading and Water. You can even create, import and export your own brush presets in the Brush Creator (see screenshot). With this new feature, I expect that members of the Rebelle community will be sharing their custom brushes soon.

Traditional watercolor artists use a clean brush to dilute the paint on the canvas. You will like that any Rebelle brush can be used as a clean brush, with just a click of the Clean Brush icon.

With the improved and faster brush engine, you can use larger canvases, bigger brushes and create unlimited custom brushes. Of course, this new brush engine is why the watercolor and acrylics simulations are so realistic. Use the links below to try it for yourself.

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Rebelle 2 Website
https://www.escapemotions.com/products/rebelle/index.php

Online Demo
https://www.escapemotions.com/experiments/rebelle/index.php

Online Gallery
https://www.escapemotions.com/gallery/index.php

Escape Motions Blog
https://www.escapemotions.com/blog.php

Disclosure: Escape Motions provided a copy of Rebelle 2 to me for review purposes. The opinions are completely my own based on my experience.

Screenshots used by permission of Escape Motions, s.r.o.