There are all kinds of mobile apps for drawing today that can help you quickly turn your thoughts into real designs. Most of them support stylus pens: these convenient and precise tools are better in many aspects of drawing. However, you should find a really professional app with many features to unleash your creative potential to the fullest. That’s why we’ve arranged this list of the top 10 software tools for drawing that have pretty much all you need for work or fun.
Before we start, you have to understand that each app is special. For example, Autodesk SketchBook is a great drawing tool, but it’s not suitable for editing photos. That means you shouldn’t just go to the end of our list and grab the best app: find what suits your style and requirements the best.
- Krita
Krita is an open-source sketching app suitable for just about every major OS. It’s especially useful for making comic art, and you can also add animation or sounds to your creations. It’s free, user-friendly, and pretty flexible.
- MediBang Paint
This sketching app is widely known among anime artists, but it has enough useful features to be used by anyone who needs a simple and reliable drawing environment with cloud features that allow you to switch between devices almost seamlessly.
- FireAlpaca
FireAlpaca is a free drawing app that’s especially great for creating vector art, and it is very simple, so you can learn it in no time even without any prior experience. It can also run on pretty old devices.
- Autodesk SketchBook
This is a popular draw-only app that has many useful tools for digital artists. It’s free and pretty simple, but there are still all kinds of instruments and options to explore. Be aware that it’s not suitable for any editing jobs.
- CorelDRAW
CorelDRAW is a pretty old and reputable drawing tool that is great for both professionals and novices: there are dozens of brushes, filters, effects, and fonts. Make sure to check it out, but the trial period is just 15 days, and then you’ll have to find $300 to continue using the program.
- Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop is probably the most well-known tool on our list, and that’s very well-deserved. It’s full of all kinds of useful features: smart filters, retouching instruments, sharing options, and so on. But the app is pretty expensive, and it can appear confusing to novice artists.
- Procreate
Procreate is available only to iPad Pro users, but it’s a very useful tool for designers and artists. There are all kinds of tools here, including some useful editing features. It’s a great app that works well with other similar programs like Photoshop.
- Blender
Blender is a popular 3D-modeling tool, but many people use it for drawing, too. It’s full of features that work well with all styles and ideas, allowing you to create anything from sculptures to comics with your stylus pen. But what’s really great is that you don’t need to pay any subscription fee.
- Inkscape
Inkscape is a drawing app for vector art that’s widely used for commercial design projects. It’s perfect for logos, data charts, infographics, and other business-related graphical objects. All objects are easily manipulated, and you can get the result in numerous convenient formats:
- PNG,
- OpenDocument Drawing,
- DXF,
- PDF,
- and so on.
- Artrage
Artrage is one of the best drawing tools out there that allows you to make realistic drawings using only your stylus pen. The app has multiple flexible brushes that can be used to create the appearance of a watercolor or oil painting. There’s also an option to record your work as a video to show the process in real time. Artrage is favored by many digital artists and designers for the unique feeling of working on a real canvas, so make sure to check it out.
