What drawing software should i use

My favorite thing about Affinity Designer is that all its tools and features are built keeping end-users in mind. That means they are easy to access and easy to learn and use. With Affinity Designer, you can create illustrations, icons, branding materials, printing projects, mockups, and more. The app also supports non-destructive operations which gives it an edge over its competitors. You will get all these features and more for just a one-time payment fee.

That change has made this the best free dragon program for every designer out there. Whether you are a designer, an illustrator, or an animator, Sketchbook will help you not only improve your skills but also create amazing art once you are spend some time on it. My favorite feature of the Sketchbook is its minimalistic UI which dissolves out of your way when you are actually creating your piece. You are left with a blank piece of a digital canvas where your creativity can flow easily.

Features are one of the many things that make AutoDesk Sketchbook one of the best drawing programs. There are more than designer brushes, support for unlimited layers, blending modes, grouping of layers, and more. Corel Painter Another great tool for designers, illustrators, and digital artists is the Corel Painter which brings a plethora of tools to help you get the job done.

Corel Painter markets itself as a tool for pros created by the pros. Fortunately, that description is not far from the truth. You get a huge selection of brushes more than , exclusive particles, pattern pens, thick paint brushes, and much more. Corel Painter is supported by its huge library of video tutorials which is great for any artist to get started. That being said, if you are a beginner, you will find it a harder to use.

Adobe Illustrator While Photoshop is a competent tool for designers if you are looking for the best drawing programs for vector design, Adobe Illustrator is what you should be using. Hundreds of thousands of designers and artists use Illustrator CC to create everything from web icons and product packaging to book illustrations and billboards.

With Illustrator, you will get all the tools that you need to turn simple shapes and colors into sophisticated logos, icons, and graphics. Since you are working with vector graphics here, your artwork can scale anywhere from a small smartphone to a billboard.

You also get access to gorgeous typography and freehand drawing tools. Illustrator is definitely a drawing program you should check out. Krita If you are looking for one of the best drawing programs that is free and open-source, and brings all the professional tools at your disposal, look no further than Krita.

Krita is used by designers all over the world to create concept art, comics, illustrations, and more. While all the other above-mentioned drawing programs focus more on illustrations, Krita is more geared towards comics and concept artists.

The app features an intuitive and customizable user interface with awesome features such as brush stabilizers, pop-up pallets, different brush engines, an extensive resource manager and more. If you are into drawing art and comics, you should definitely check it out. Price: Free 7. Inkscape Another open-source, free, and powerful drawing program for creators is Inkscape.

Whether you are an illustrator, designer, web designer or just someone who needs to create some vector imagery, Inkscape is a great free tool for you. The program offers plenty of features including object creation, object manipulation, color selector, node editing, path conversion, multi-line text support, anti-aliased display, support for almost all the major file formats and more.

In fact, Inkscape is probably one of the best free drawing programs that can work as a kind of Illustrator alternative as well. Clip Studio is one of the best drawing programs for artists and illustrators who primarily work on manga.

While it can easily be used for normal illustrations and animations, it really excels when you are using the tool to create a manga. I mean, it is the official successor of Manga Studio and is recommended by all the major manga and comics creators around the world.

The program offers features such as advanced pen pressure detection for natural, realistic-looking pen strokes, decoration tools for easy drawing of complex areas, vector layers, quick coloring, and more. If you plan to work in either the manga or comic industry, this will be your buddy in your journey.

Rebelle 3 Rebelle is a one-of-a-kind paint software that lets you create realistic watercolor, acrylic, wet and dry media artwork, using real-world color blending, wet diffusion and drying. Well, the answer was a profound yes as the program is very popular and quite powerful. That being said, it is not for everyone, rather, Rebelle 3 is aimed at traditional painters and CG artists who want to take a dive into digital art with the skill set that they already possess.

If you are one of them, definitely check this app out. One of the best things about this software is that it is quite light on resources so people with older PCs can also make use of this app. While the more powerful apps like Illustrator and Corel Painter offer tons of features, they also require a quiet capable PC or Mac to run. On the other hand, FireAlpaca might be light on features when compared the heavyweights but it can also easily run on older hardware.

You can use Krita for any kind of drawing and illustration, but it's particularly great for comics and manga. There are panel templates, halftone filters, and perspective tools in addition to the usual brushes, fills and pens. Each brush is totally customizable, and you can save your bespoke brushes to use again later. Right-clicking anywhere on the canvas in Krita will bring up a selection wheel that lets you pick a new tool and select a colour in seconds — a system that's much easier than trawling through menus and settings.

Krita was created by artists for artists, and it shows in the dozens of thoughtful little touches that make it easier to create great paintings. There are handy drawing aids for creating straight lines, vanishing points and smooth shapes. You also get layers, masks, various transform tools, HDR support, and advanced selection functions. Krita is an incredibly powerful drawing program, and it's yours to download and use completely free.

Artweaver Free enables you to create beautifully realistic digital drawings by taking input — from your mouse, a stylus or, if you have a touchscreen PC, from whatever you feel like tapping the screen with — and applying ultra-realistic brush effects. In addition to familiar brushes such as conte brushes, calligraphy pens and airbrushes, this free drawing software also gives you a huge range of patterns and pens, enabling you to produce very complex images with the minimum of effort.

Kids love experimenting with all the different brushes, and we love not having to clean up any mess afterwards. Like the classic version of Microsoft Paint which is was originally intended to replace , Paint 3D offers a small selection of drawing tools for doodling on a flat canvas. However, the real fun happens when you click the 3D Objects button.

You can choose a finish for your shape options include matte, gloss, dull metal, and polished metal , paint its surface, and apply lighting effects. Multiple models can be positioned at different depths and combined to create a scene, and you can even bring doodles into the real world if you have access to a 3D printer. Fresh Paint is another art app from Microsoft — this time designed to replicate the feeling of putting brush or pen to paper.

Krita has been under development for more than a decade and is loved by professionals and amateurs alike. Its user interface is made up of panels which can be moved around to set up a custom workspace, and you can also configure shortcuts for commonly-used tools. The program comes with 9 unique brush engines e. Color Smudge, Particle, and Shape that can be tweaked extensively and then organized using a unique tagging system.

A pop-up palette lets you quickly pick colors and brushes while the resource manager makes it easy to import brush and texture packs from other artists. Krita features a "Wrap-around" mode that allows you to create seamless textures and patterns, whereas the "Multibrush" tool can be used to mirror illustrations about multiple axes to achieve a kaleidoscopic effect.

Graphics processing programs are incredible when it comes to modern illustrations, but what if they could replicate the old-school charm of traditional art, such as a watercolor painting? Meet Rebelle 3, a unique digital art software which does just that. Simulating techniques like color blending and wet diffusion, it allows you to create realistic acrylic and watercolor artworks with little to no effort. The program comes with a wide range of tools e. You can even "tilt" the canvas to reproduce flow effects and design custom brushes with the powerful brush creator.

Rebelle 3 features 22 different paper styles e. Also included in the package are new color filters, a "Masking Fluid" layer, and 23 Photoshop blending modes. Rebelle 3 sports a customizable user interface and supports multi-touch gestures. If the answer is yes, then Clip Studio Paint Ex is exactly what you need. Trusted by professional comic book artists and manga illustrators around the world, the powerhouse digital art software boasts a truckload of specialized features.

These include panel tools, customizable speech balloons, effect lines, and rulers to draw a variety of lines and shapes. You can also add perspective and realistic depth to backgrounds, position 3D figures with adjustable body shapes and camera angles directly on the canvas, and do a lot more.

The program makes it simple to draw vector shapes in smooth strokes and even comes with a "vector eraser" tool to easily erase intersecting lines. Clip Studio Paint Ex gives you access to thousands of customizable brushes, as well as "effect lines," that can be used to add dramatic effects e.

Managing the storyboarding workflow is a breeze too, thanks to the page manager and story editor features. Apple's tablets have always been amazing, and with the upcoming iPadOS , they are about to get even better.

However, if you truly want to take the creative potential of your iPad and Apple Pencil to the next level, you need something like Procreate. The award-winning digital art app lets you easily create sketches, illustrations, and more, anytime and anywhere. You can choose from more than handcrafted brushes, import custom ones, and even make your own using the powerful brush engine.

Procreate includes many features that have been developed exclusively for iPads. For example, "ColorDrop" quickly fills your artwork with seamless color. Then there's "Drawing Assist," which automatically corrects your brush strokes in real-time. You can also add vector text, as well as a wide array of dramatic finishing effects and filters e.

Warp, Symmetry, and Liquify to your illustrations. The world of Android offers quite a few great tablets that you can use to illustrate on the go. That said, you also need a digital art app for that, and we have no qualms recommending ArtRage.

It comes with a full range of creative tools that do a great job of simulating their real-world counterparts. You can paint using thick oils, delicate watercolors, and even experiment with textures by blending and smearing the paint. Thanks to a diverse range of realistic tools e.

ArtRage supports unlimited layers and is compatible with all industry-standard blending modes. Using the "Metallic Tinting" feature, you can also add reflectivity to pigments. If you want to use an existing photo as a guide for painting, the same can be done by importing it as a tracing image. The app even samples colors from the tracing image automatically, allowing you to focus on brush strokes. ArtRage is compatible with both Wacom and S-Pen styluses.

Are you looking for more programs to take your digital art to the next level? Check out our article on the best 3D software to download. Our Process.