Art programs?

I'm still getting odd ideas. I started thinking this might be a good idea for stress relief and to finally do something with my odd ideas.

Sorry, a bit confused. Are you asking what drawing software there are?

Baxton said:

Sorry, a bit confused. Are you asking what drawing software there are?

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Yeah, what would be a good program to start with?

From the ones I've personally used, Autodesk Sketchbook is a nice drawing software. You can get some good detail in them taking the time but I usually used it for sketching purposes. It's totally free and really easy to use. It has different tools like a paint brush, pen, pencil, a sharpie like tool, etc. There is a pro version though, that includes a lot more stuff. More tools to work with and it even has an Animating feature.

Paint tool SAI is really good too. Though from what I can tell, the only free version they have is a 30 day trial. I think the full version is $70 US dollars. But it can do vector and raster based drawing/ painting, and really good with line art. There are A LOT of tools, I wasn't able to use all of them. For that one if you don't really know what everything is, I'd recommend a tutorial.

I hear good things about inkscape though I don't know that much about it. And I'm pretty sure it's free (Although I think that's vector based).

And I did a quick look at one other. It's called Krita and it's free as well. By the looks of it it functions pretty much like Photoshop. Though I think it excels with comics and manga (but I'm sure you can do more than just comics with it). A lot of brush variations. And a lot of tools. It's layout looks pretty much like a copy and pasted Photoshop layout too.

If you have a budget, Photoshop elements is (I think) $70 and a one time purchase, it's pretty much Photoshop with less tools. Although Adobe has a monthly plan for all of their software including Photoshop for $20 a month for students. If it's for non-students/ teachers, it's $20 for a single software, and it's $50 a month for all software. Better than getting the regular and paying full price and having to buy it again after an update.

Those are all of the ones I can list at the top of my head though. I'm sure there are a lot of other ones that I haven't heard of. You could try looking up speed drawing videos and seeing what they use too. If you're just beginning, I'd think that sketchbook would be a good choice to start with as it's a very self-explanatory software and you can do a lot with it, at least from what I've seen from others. There's also gimp but I never quite liked using that. Not to say that it's bad, but I didn't really like the UI personally. I started out with Paint.Net ^^ but I don't really recommend it.

Hope that helped

Sorry about the start of this thread. I should have phased it much better.

KryanAshford said:

Sorry about the start of this thread. I should have phased it much better.

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No sweat, it happens

I'm going to give the autodesk a try and see what I can do with it.

I hear that Gimp is good if you don't want to spend money. If you do wanna buy a drawing program, I would recomend Clip Studio Paint/Manga Studio over Photoshop. Much cheaper, and it gives a much better line quality than Photoshop when you draw. Also, it has gap closer on the bucket tool. THANK LORD O MIGHTY!

I've also been wanting to give digital art a try. I tried out some version of photoshop at one point but of course it was only a trial...

I'll try out Autodesk Sketchbook when I get a chance. Do you know if it has a "kneaded eraser" like tool? I cannot draw on paper without my 2H pencil and a kneaded eraser as that allows me to make as many mistakes and crooked lines/arcs as is necessary and erase the ones I don't want to use.

LilBouncyDerpy said:

I've also been wanting to give digital art a try. I tried out some version of photoshop at one point but of course it was only a trial...

I'll try out Autodesk Sketchbook when I get a chance. Do you know if it has a "kneaded eraser" like tool? I cannot draw on paper without my 2H pencil and a kneaded eraser as that allows me to make as many mistakes and crooked lines/arcs as is necessary and erase the ones I don't want to use.

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The eraser tool functions like a basic erasing tool. At normal settings it erases everything on the layer selected. There's a hard eraser and a soft eraser, either of them you can optimize to how you'd like.

I forgot to mention this before. They have a basic version of sketchbook and an essential version. They're both free, though the essential version requires you to make an account (which is free too btw) and it only takes a few seconds. At least from what I remember. Let me know what you guys think Best of luck!

You could give krita a try. Its a bit nicer for painting than gimp.
Also mypaint, which focuses mostly on the brush engine to recreate a more natural paint behaviour.

ive used Autodesk Sketchbook and i find its easy to use and responsive with graphics tablet.

i have tried using gimp but i found there to be an input latency when using graphics tablet.

I use Paint Tool Sai for digital drawing with a tablet. Looking at Krita it sounds to be fairly similar, so probably just as good, will have to give it a try myself.
Now when it comes to doing graphic design, and textures for games, I use Gimp.

KryanAshford said:

I'm going to give the autodesk a try and see what I can do with it.

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Heya! Wanted to see how you're liking Sketchbook or if you found one that you like better?

Microsoft Paint.

Only half kidding there, since you can actually accomplish really weird art in there if you try. But it's no photoshop. Not even close.

But seriously, paint has more potential than people would like to think.

I use GIMP for touching up photos, but I like Krita for painting. It's free, works well with my drawing tablet, and I've seen lot's of digital art made with it--once you learn how to use it, it can be a powerful tool. I'm also fond of MyPaint (another open source tool). I found that it can mimic the look of pencil very well. Although it does lack a lot of advanced tools, It's great for sketching.