Mar 10, 2021 The best drawing and painting software. A very well-known drawing tool from the creative masters. ArtRage is an art program primarily for Windows and Mac. On-screen annotation software lets you take virtual notes on your desktop and save the results. Here are the best screen annotation tools to use.
Digital art software gets better and better each year.
The right software can help you paint faster and feel better about your artwork. Each program handles brush strokes and color blending differently, and the price tags vary from expensive to free.
Adobe Photoshop still reigns supreme as an all-round industry standard for digital artists. Yet there’s always new software coming out to compete against Adobe’s throne.
Choosing your art software is no longer about the biggest features, but rather finding an application that suits your specific needs as an artist.
Beginners who just want to practice are better off choosing a free program compared to professionals who want to learn software for an industry job. If your goal is to work for a game studio as a concept artist then you’ll probably have a different set of goals.
In this post we’ll take an in-depth look at 7 of the most popular programs for digital drawing & painting by comparing their features and seeing how they stack up.
But if you’re in a hurry here’s a quick overview to help you decide:
- Professional Choice: Adobe Photoshop
- Free Choice: Krita
- Budget Choice: Clip Studio Paint
If you need a bit more info on these programs just keep reading.
Adobe Photoshop
Price: $9.99/mo
Platforms: Mac, Windows
Adobe Photoshop is the most popular and widely used software for digital art.
It’s feature-heavy, regularly updated, and you can use it to create everything from concept thumbnails to comic book pages or even photobashed pieces.
Photoshop started as an image-editing program for photographers. Over time it slowly became a staple for many other industries, digital art included.
With this software you have a huge variety of painting tools, brushes, filters, plugins, and layer styles.
It’s an industry standard for all digital artists across the entertainment industry because it just works. If you want a career in video games, animation, feature films, or any general production studio, knowledge of Photoshop goes a long way.
The learning curve is pretty steep here. If you are a beginner you may feel overwhelmed by all the options and get lost in technical aspects of the program. But once you’ve learned the basics, your imagination is the limit!
You can do anything in whatever style you choose and edit photos to boot!
Being the most popular software for creatives artists, there’s a mass of Photoshop tutorials available online. Adobe even released a series of up-to-date free tutorials which will take you from beginner to expert level.
If you ever have a problem or question on anything, a quick Google search will get you a video answer or helpful forum post.
Concept artists like Photoshop’s custom brushes and often create their own. Detailed layer settings, regular updates, and a sleek user interface are the driving force behind Photoshop’s continued popularity.
You can rotate your canvas naturally to mimic the rotation of paper. And you can setup grids and rulers for complex scenes, or even bring in 3D objects to paint over. PSD files(Photoshop’s native file format) play well with other Adobe programs and this file type is an industry standard.
That means you can import PSDs into almost any other art software without a hitch. GIMP and Krita both accept PSD files along with many other programs.
This is why many artists combine Photoshop with other painting software. Depending on the workflow you’re going for you could do your concept and lineart in something like Clip Studio Paint, then bring it to Photoshop for coloring and final touch-ups.
Other digital art software doesn’t try to replace Photoshop but instead tries to improve on the interface for specific types of art(ex: comics, storyboards, environment paintings, etc).
Once you’ve signed up for a Creative Cloud membership you get a free, non-conditional seven-day trial version of Photoshop. This offer applies to Adobe’s other software as well. If you like Photoshop and want to buy it, there are four purchase plans to choose from.
The cheapest is the Photographers package which is $9.99(only available annually) and it includes Lightroom CC. If you want to buy a monthly plan you can get Photoshop for $29.99 a month.
If you want to go the extra mile and get the rest of Adobe’s software, the entire suite costs $74.99 monthly(or annual for $49.99 p/m).
Bonus Tip: Students 13 years and older get a 60% discount on the full Adobe suite plan!
People love Photoshop for its versatility and wealth of free knowledge online. Adobe has thrown millions of dollars into development so Photoshop isn’t going anywhere.
It’s a solid, professional choice for aspiring digital artists and concept artists.
Corel Painter
Price: $350
Platforms: Mac, Windows
Corel Painter is characterized by painterly brush strokes and a traditional artist’s feel to the interface.
Painter is for artists who love loose, messy brushwork and want to capture the beauty of traditional mediums on a digital canvas. It comes standard with 900 brushes covering every possible situation you could imagine.
As you might guess from the name, Corel Painter is focused on painting. But this should be great for artists who only want software to draw or paint digitally.
It has a 2.5D brush toolset that mimics real-world brushes giving you full control over the final “style” of your work.
Painter has been a serious alternative to Photoshop for several years and is the company always listens to user requests. They’ve been working hard to add new features every year and have added a bunch of artist-suggested tools into their latest release.
For example, some users complained of UI sensitivity and slow response times. Those issues were fixed with the 2019 version along with an entire UI design overhaul.
Icons were redesigned to be more intuitive and the interface was changed to a darker theme.
Among all the new features with that version, the most celebrated was the pinned color wheel.
You can position the color wheel wherever you like on the screen giving an instant look at color options without swatches. This spectral feature means you can work in detail without the circular brush icon obscuring your view.
In Painter’s web series “Paint like Bob Ross” you can learn how to paint digital landscapes in 30 minutes using their brushes—a great introduction to conceptualizing landscapes for beginners.
The software is feature heavy and beginners might still feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of brush options and settings. But Corel is worth learning because it is another trusted industry staple among character designers, concept artists, and visual development artists.
Corel Painter has been around since 1992 and you can find an extensive library of free tutorials on their website. Or if you search on YouTube I’m sure you can find plenty of free tutorials there as well.
You won’t find as many resources compared to Photoshop. But Corel Painter is still a beast in the concept art world, or just the digital painting world in general, making it an awesome choice for hobbyists or newbies just picking up digital art for the first time.
As of this writing, a brand new copy of Corel Painter costs $350 making it an expensive once-off purchase. Although you can get a free 30-day trial to demo the software and see if it’s right for you.
Krita
Price: Free
Platforms: Mac, Windows, Linux
Krita is a free open source digital painting program designed for cartoonists, illustrators, concept artists, and pretty much all digital artists.
The software was initially developed as a general image editing competitor to Photoshop but focused their efforts on digital painting starting in 2009. The Krita community donates monthly to the software efforts helping it to stay free and funding development of new features
If you have a background in some other digital art software(Photoshop for example) then Krita’s tools will be a little familiar and a little not-so-familiar.
Whether you’re switching or just getting into Krita it’s worth the time to watch a few tutorials to find out how everything works.
Krita hasn’t released many official tutorial videos but they have created detailed documentation online. If it’s your first venture into digital art then start off learning about the basic UI and toolsets.
Use the pop-up pallet to select your brushes, erasers, and colors intuitively. All other tools are stored in the panels to the left and right. Krita supports PSD files so that you can switch between Photoshop and Krita with ease.
And there’s a ton of freebies online like free brush packs that mimic everything from charcoal to watercolors and so much more. The beauty of Krita is the free price tag and the immensely supportive community around this software.
Krita has been criticized by some professional artists for its lag, seemingly unintuitive design, and uneven brush softness. Although the criticism has merit, the program’s core features work well and you will learn them with practice.
Also worth noting this has to be the absolute best choice for anyone on a Linux machine. Photoshop does not support Linux outside of a virtual emulator but Krita can run natively in any Linux distro.
This is a huge +1 for Krita since it’s really the best digital painting alternative for our Linux & Unix friends.
If you don’t have the cash to burn on digital art programs Krita is the perfect choice.
Use the program while you save up some money to grab another program. Or just stick with Krita and use it free for life! Many professional artists like David Revoy create all of their work with Krita and their stuff looks amazing.
Best thing about Krita is that it’s simple for beginners to learn and it doesn’t confuse you with a ton features or fancy tools. Krita’s purpose is digital painting and that’s precisely what it does well.
Clip Studio Paint
Price: $49
Platforms: Mac, Windows
Clip Studio Paint is the most popular software for creating comics and manga artwork.
Clip Studio Paint was originally named Manga Studio but changed names in 2013. It originated in Japan as specialist software for manga, illustration, and animators.
The program has long been a worldwide affordable alternative to Photoshop for digital artists but got more recognition with the name change.
The most notable drawing difference between Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop is the brush tool. In Clip Studio the brush tool instantly corrects any minor wobble you make while drawing on a tablet, leaving you with smooth clean linework.
Clip Studio is optimized for comic book creation and has various tools to speed up the process.
A canvas layout tool makes paneling quick with perspective rulers and a library of predefined formats. The pen tool lets you to work in a versatile vector format which means your creations can be scalable without quality loss.
In the most recent release there’s a new library of 3D objects and posable models. This is useful for concept artists who like to use references to get poses down quickly.
You can drop in a 3D model, pose it using an intuitive joint system, change the camera angle, make the character fat or thin, and choose between genders. After you’ve drawn over it you can use that same model’s shading as a reference for lighting.
Then when you’re done just delete it. Easy-peasy.
With CSP your art will always have a crisp digital finish as the software doesn’t strive for a traditional look. Although it’s possible to give your brush strokes a blended texture using brushes, Clip Studio Paint is not designed to mimic traditional mediums.
The standard version of Clip Studio Paint also comes with some very basic animation features. You can quickly test character movement over 24 frames without the annoyance of switching programs. But this is not really the best software for animation so it works best in conjunction with other programs for that purpose.
Now Clip Studio Paint comes in two versions: PRO(standard) and EX(full-featured).
Unless you’re planning on putting all of your projects through Clip Studio Paint and creating various manga & comic books, you’ll probably be happy with the PRO version. The EX edition has only a few extra features that would benefit expert users.
EX lets you save manga & comic pages in a ‘book’ which acts like one editable file. You can then bulk save them for printing which shaves off a ton of time and organizational effort.
The animation feature also gets an upgrade with EX and you can create an unlimited number of frames(instead of the standard 24).
EX comes with filters for 3D assets too turning them black and white for easier integration into your scenes.
Generally speaking, the PRO version is the same and EX minus the above features. It’s unlikely you’ll need those features as a digital painter or concept artist. Only serious comic and manga artists would find the EX features useful.
Try out either version with a free 30-day trial of both PRO and EX versions. If you don’t like it then just move on. The free version does give plenty to toy with so you’ll know whether you like CSP or don’t.
And it’s worth mentioning that the PRO edition is an affordable option at only $49 flat fee, while EX comes at a premium of $219.
Although sometimes you can get CSP at a discounted rate from annual sales so keep checking their prices.
GIMP
Price: Free
Platforms: Mac, Windows, Linux
GIMP is another open source program built as a free Photoshop alternative.
Back when computer graphics were slowly becoming “a thing” it was up to software developers to create graphics for companies. With Photoshop costing a lot more back then, buying it was out of the budget for many companies.
GIMP was built to fill the need for a cheaper option to digital imaging editing software.
Unlike other free digital art software, GIMP was designed to be a full replacement for Photoshop. This means you can use it for digital painting but it’s really meant for graphic design, photo editing, text effects, and similar features.
Likewise this program has all the tools you need for digital art. If you are looking for Photoshop’s functionality without the price tag you’ll be happy to with GIMP’s default functionality.
If you know a little about software development you can also add to GIMP’s code by creating your own plugins for the system. But the default setup is more than enough for artists.
Many versions of GIMP have been released over the years, but their team of volunteers hasn’t been able to keep up with the sheer financial power of Adobe. The user interface is definitely unrefined and will be very confusing to beginners.
There are loads of GIMP tutorials created by their loyal users and there’s enough content to help you learn everything you need about the software.
Although GIMP doesn’t have a dedicated support team to answer your questions, many issues are well documented on various forums and you’ll be able to troubleshoot a solution with a few Google searches.
The painting tools are reasonable, although in my opinion Krita is a stronger option if you just need painting.
Granted you can find plenty of free GIMP brushes all made for digital drawing & painting.
But really this software is the best all-round alternative to Photoshop. If you see yourself doing a bit of design work, some painting, and some photo editing, try out GIMP and see what you think.
ArtRage
Price: $79
Platforms: Mac, Windows
ArtRage is a digital painting powerhouse that’s perfect for traditional artists moving digital and for existing professional artists.
Unlike other digital art programs, ArtRage has stepped away from the complicated user interface and ditched the blocky side panels. They want your focus on the canvas creating great work.
When you open the program you’ll find a semi-circular brush picker on the bottom left of the screen and a color picker on the bottom right. Both give you immediate access to the most important tools.
Small “pods” containing extra options hover just above the circles, minimizing extra clutter.
After you’ve picked your color and brush you can start drawing on the canvas. The UI automatically disappears(although this setting is optional) and without the UI you get a full screen canvas to work on without any distractions. Pretty cool!
If you’ve never used digital painting software before then ArtRage is fantastic. It’s beginner friendly and super affordable.
You can start off slow, familiarizing yourself with the various brushes, and slowly work your way up to painting full scenes and character designs.
If you are coming from Photoshop you’ll find the minimalist layout refreshing and easy to pick up. The brush presets are so good that you don’t need to waste time adjusting them much at all.
One of ArtRage’s most exciting features is called “real color blending”. It calculates realistic color mixing as you paint and it’s useful for digital painting in an oil or watercolor style.
If you want to try your hand at digital painting for the first time, this software will hold your hand and take you from hobbyist to professional if you put in the effort.
It doesn’t have all the gadgets and gizmos that some prominent art programs have, but it’s got all you need to make fun paintings(and a little extra).
ArtRage is budget software and friendly to those getting started. You can also use the demo version for an unlimited amount of time. The demo doesn’t let you save anything, which of course is a drag, but you can use that to familiarize yourself with the program.
If you decide you want the full version it costs $79 and you’ll receive all future updates included with your license.
If that sounds a bit expensive you could go for ArtRage Lite which is only $29.90. The lite version is great for beginners and includes all the painting features of the full version.
Drawing Tools For Computer
Think of this much like Krita but aimed for simplicity. It’s cheap enough that you could run ArtRage for life and it’s certainly refreshing when you come from a big bulky art program.
Paint Tool SAI
Price: $49
Platforms: Windows
Lastly on this list is Paint Tool SAI: a simple painting program that’s exceptionally popular among anime & manga artists.
Paint Tool SAI was first released in 2008 to a wave of popularity. It quickly spread among the art community who loved the clean brush strokes and unique interface.
SAI is a small, old program and has not been significantly updated over the years. It only runs on windows and has a limited set of features.
That being said, it’s aged remarkably well and is easy for beginners to pick up.
Many artists use SAI to achieve a digital watercolor effect where the blending modes can mimic watercolor, but the overall feel is smooth and sleek. Others use it primarily for lineart, or for creating a ton of anime.
You’ll find that Japanese artists almost exclusively use SAI for their artwork. It’s a very popular choice in Japan, likely because this software was originally developed by the Japanese Systemax Software.
SAI’s learning curve is minimal and if you’re coming from Photoshop you’ll pick it up almost instantly. It’s still very detailed though and great to use as a sketching program.
Use the pencil brush to get realistic sketches down on a textured canvas. Then switch over to brushes and color your line art to completion.
Now there are some minor limitations like that new projects are limited to 256 layers per canvas. It’s also known to slow down with larger file sizes and glitch when trying to preview .gifs in the explorer window.
They also have a weird system of brushes where you can import textures to merge with brush styles and create totally new brushes. I haven’t mastered this setup but you can find a ton of textures in this post with dozens of free brush assets for SAI users.
SAI is a Japanese program and is priced in JPY(Japanese Yen). It costs ¥5400 which roughly equates to $49.
Compared to other software on this list, SAI is a tad on the pricier side considering the last update was in 2016.
Small complaints aside, considering the price tag and the anime-centric fanbase I’d say SAI is an awesome choice for anime lovers the world over.
Get started using SAI by following some easy beginner tutorials on painting in the program. If you put in the time you’ll be a pro within a few weeks.
A fantastic program for anyone serious about anime-style art or any kind of digital painting. Biggest downside is you’ll have to be a Windows user.
Although if I had to cast a vote for the absolute best digital painting software, that title falls with Photoshop.
Here’s hoping even more digital art software comes out in the next 10 years and gives some stiff competition to Adobe’s reign.
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In recent years digital advancements have designers leaving pen and paper behind, allowing them to create visual image files using their computer mouse or Graphic Drawing Tablets.
if you are good at freehand pencil/drawing then a tablet is great to have your work already created in the digital realm without transferring it there later to work on more. sketching basically, i’m not good at it but a good sketcher would probably love a good tablet.
and, if you need to edit (especially for raster images) down to individual pixels and pixel groups then a tablet is very helpful.
tablets are great to have when you need to transfer a raster image into a vector environment and vice versa because you are definitely going to need to edit pixel by pixel to get edges to blend etc.
Almost any professional graphics software will work for Drawing tablets, as they have pretty much a stranglehold on the digitizer tablet market. So you should pick the right software for your needs and preferences.
I tried out a lot during the years: photoshop (cs2 - cc ), krita, gimp, paint tool sai, mypaint, corel painter, paintstorm studio and maybe more, just can't remember. I own a XP-Pen Innovator 16 graphics tablet with screen 15.6inch .
What I can say is that every software has their own advantages. The question is: what advantages are good for you personally. That's why I suggest to try different softwares before you decide which one is the best for you.
I can name some really-well known ones and I'll say my own personal opinion about them.
5 Best Paid Drawing & Painting programs for Artists :
On this side we've the comercial programs. They can be very pricey but they have the advantage in that you’re buying a high quality product right out of the box made by paid professionals. They won’t suffer from a lack of updates or bugs like most opens source programs do.
1. Adobe Photoshop CC - many tools
The king of photo editing, painting and hands down the best program. When you see an amazing painting eight out of ten times was made on photoshop. On the free side only Krita comes close to match it’s raw power.
Get this one if you can.
This one is the favorite for all professionals mainly due to all the highly advanced tools it has and it’s second to none brush engine.
Best Drawing Tool For Mac Laptop
No wonder it’s the most pirated software ever.
Some people get intimidated by it, but it’s actually very easy to learn. Because you won’t be needing most of its tools as the majority are mainly used for photo manipulation —not for painting. In fact if you learn to use this program you’ll know the basics of all the others.
All painting programs want to be as good as it (wheter they admit it or not).
Most tutorials and learning tools are made for photoshop so it’s ideal for beginners and pros alike. All painting programs owe something to this one.
It’s main drawbacks are the fact that it’s a very heavy program that will demand a lot resources from your computer, like memory and RAM. Not for the faint of heart.
Photoshop is the industry standard. It's easy to find tutorials, brushes, or anything else you need,
This is subscription based now. Has so much stuff featured and it's good at doing anything. There are different tiers starting from $15/month (Photoshop + Lightroom + other stuff) up to $100 (All adobe apps + adobe stock). It has everything. Tons of options like custom brushes, workspace customization, plug-ins, filters, effects, 3D support, and many more features. Not sure if you can buy older versions for a fixed amount... There's a trial too.
While it can be faulty, Photoshop is still 'the industry standard'. At some point you'll have to learn how to use it in one way or another. It can be complicated, frustrating and the default brush engine is not that good with lineart, but still, it's can be considered the best in everything overall.
2. PaintTool SAI:
Really popular and cheap for its capabilities. Has a free trial. It has a pretty good drawing engine overall.
This is the program all other “manga” painting software want to be. Manga artist love it. It’s legendary.
It has an amazing watercolor brush and eight out of ten times most manga style art, on the internet, is made with this software.
It’s very lightweight and very easy to learn and master. In fact the “easy” part of its name is not just a trademark; it really is easy.
Artist love it for it’s lack of lag, great paint feeling and it’s superior linear to even photoshop’s.
However it does suffer from the drawback in that its developers are too content “being at the top” and they seldom ever (if ever) update or fix bugs for it.
3. Clip Paint Studio/Manga Studio - Windows/Mac
Taking advantage of Sai's lack of— “enthusiasm”— comes Manga Studio , especially for lineart. Has trial.
Clip Studio paint is a specific software to use for digital painting and comic drawing. This software offer a lot of easy method to drawing comic (something like comic panels, comic page, comic cloud etc) and have a lot of artistic brushes to help you on drawing. Any professional artist use this software usually have manga style drawing .
It's very similar to Sai. But it has much more features. It leans heavily on artist that want to publish comics/manga as such it has many features that help on it including vectors.
It's a bit pricer than Sai, but it,s development team is much more committed .
4. Corel Painter
a great realistic painting tool, bridging the gap between traditional media and the digital world.
Corel allows you to customize anything you want, be it brushes, palettes, papers, colors, patterns, gradients, etc. It has every professional tool to provide the user with a seamless drawing experience. There are over 900 brushes in Corel Painter with an addition of 36 new brushes for diverse drawing requirements. It also offers a range of amazing tools for creating the perfect composition. Additionally, you can also import content from others to complete your drawing.
This one is a favorite for many professionals due to it’s power to emulate real life tools/ traditional media. The feeling of painting with actual oils and the like is second to none. If you come from a traditional background this one is the very best bet.
It's awesome - the real brushes simulating the real deal are uncanny, it's almost too good to be believed. However, some of the functions are extremely clumsy to use - resizing or moving images, rotating layers etc, small details which can frustrate the user or slow down the workflow.
Higher tier, expensive stuff . Just like photoshop, profesional love it but–
I personally don’t recomend it for hobbyists, like me, due to the fact that it’s too pricey (money you should be investing in learning)
It’s also very complex and it has a high learning curve so it can be incredibly confusing specially for people that don’t know anything about digital painting.
5. ArtRage
This full-featured digital painting software from Ambient Design, with new digital editing tools, provide improved performance. The advanced features make creating art a fun and easy activity.
On ArtRage, you can customize your paper to get the desired effect and allows you to design brushes, composition tools, pattern and gradient fill, filters, etc. The latest version comes new tools such as the natural pencil, flexible custom brush editing along with previous tools. The user can personalize everything and can adapt the software to one's needs.
Art rage is a cheap alternative for a program that emulates traditional medium like oils and water colors.
Free digital art software
First let’s talk about the ones you can get for free “as in gratis.” It’s said that there is no such thing as a “free meal.” But this is an exception as most of these were done by talented people that believe in freedom of software (open source) . Neat uh?
6. Gimp
Mac Os/Windows/linux. While it's free and has a lot of freedom, it's like linux. Can be complicated, faulty and frustrating.
Even painters that love it tend to heavily modify it to suit their needs. I was using gimp for Graphic Design for more than 2 years and I guess I'd say it's more of a Graphic Design rather than painting software.
It also suffers from the drawback that it’s creators want it to be an image editor and painter features aren’t a priority for them. Updates can take years to materialize.
Developers tend to care more about catering to other developers than the average users (hence it’s weird version numbering and confusing “save as” option) .
But if you want a solid photoshop replacement this one is the one you should try.
Many incredible artist use this program. Once you get used to the UI you’ll be doing amazing works of art in no time. Best of all, you’ll get the best of photoshop at no charge.
The “underdog” feeling of creating art as amazing as photoshop is also priceless.
7. Krita - extended tool-set aimed at digital drawing
It’s available for Mac/Windows/linux and some tablets. Krita seems to be one of the most underrated free and open source painting apps on the market, despite it being in development for over 10 years. Krita has an intuitive and customisable interface, where the dockers and panels can be set up to maximise your workflow.
Its free, open source, and very powerful. It is great for beginners who don't have the money for photoshop and you can do most things that you can do in photoshop. Have fun and enjoy!
This one is my personal favorite and in my opinion the best. The developers are hardworking knowledgeable individuals and in some aspects this software is even better than photoshop. This program was designed with 100% of painters in mind. It’s been used by profesional artist as a serious alternative for photoshop and it has every tool you could possibly need and even more!
Looking for an amazing brush engine? Perspective tools? layers? Masks? brush customization? This program has you covered.
The tool offers nine unique brush engines, including a Color Smudge engine, Shape engine and Particle engine. You can also import brushes and texture packs or create and share your own. As an added bonus, you can use a brush stabiliser to help get those perfectly smooth lines every time.
Its developers made it possible to use photoshop brushes on this program neat uh?
8. MyPaint - basic tool-set
MyPaint is a free and open-source raster graphics editor for digital painters with a focus on painting rather than image manipulation or post processing.
has a lovely, endless canvas (raster) & nicely done brush engine. Free & open source. - Linux, macOS & Windows. Can require some technical knowledge to install on macOS (use MacPorts) & Windows.
This one’s mains strength is that it’s simplicity and great UI makes you focus on painting and let’s you forget about everything else. It has great preset tools, like Krita, and you will be working right away expressing yourself. This program is the one that stimulates my imagination the best. They developers make you forget about the burdens of software making it one of the easiest programs to master.
Its main drawback is that it takes developers ages to update and they’re focusing mainly on linux. It can be a pain to install in none linux platforms.
9. Medibang paint
Platform: Available for Windows, MAC, android and iOS.
If you're looking for a great, free alternative to Clip Studio Paint, have a look at Medibang Paint Pro. Medibang Paint Pro is a lightweight digital drawing tool with a strong focus on creating manga art and comic books. It comes loaded with 800 free pre-made tones and backgrounds that you can use. It also has more than 50 brushes, and a huge selection of free fonts you can use within your projects.
This one is a favorite of manga artist due to it’s simplicity and the fact that it resembles the legendary Paint tool sai. It’s not open source but it’s still free.
It’s strongest points are how lightweight it is, the fact that it’s multiplataform, and it’s free “cloud service.” This means that you could be working on any device and continue your project in any other. Say you sketch in your iPhone and finish in your Pc’s tablet.
It also has tools for comics which makes it a serious contender. Lightweight digital drawing tool with everything you need to illustrate comics .
10. Autodesk Sketchbook
Autodesk SketchBook is available on iPad, Android , Windows and Mac OS. This is a very good software as replacement for pencil sketches. What you would do if you start completely digital is start in SketchBook with the basic setup of the page and then use tools like Photoshop (Procreate, Sketch Club) or Illustrator to fill in the details.
This sketching tool is free for personal use, which is a recent update by the Company, but a paid one for commercial purposes. The Autodesk Sketchbook is perfect for beginners as well as intermediate users as it comes with a lot of customization option. The exceptional interface helps in maximizing the drawing space of every device. The drawing engine of the sketchbook can handle 100 mpx canvas while maintaining the zoomed-in feeling you get when you work on traditional canvas. Professional artist choose Autodesk Sketchbook because it is fast and precise.
I used it for about three(ish) years without the Pro subscription and if you know what you're doing, it can still work fantastically without the subscription. It runs on Mac and Windows (not sure about Linux) and on most, if not all, mobile devices.
It has the basic tools plus some extra brush sets, and if I remember correctly without the subscription you only get three layers to work on, plus a background layer (color/transparent only) so that can be a bit limiting, but for basic sketching and painting, it works just fine.
On mobile there's an option to convert a paper image to a drawing so you can sketch on paper and then paint over it on your phone or tablet. With the subscription you basically just get some extra tools and brushes as well as unlimited layer space.
conclusion
Afterward, go buy any tablet and app you wish, it does not matter. You will know how to draw on any of them. Without good basic drawing skills all of the apps in the universe will not help you.
Draw, draw incessantly.