The Best Original Works I’ve Made So Far Tbh

being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five

“Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep” – Mary Elizabeth Frye

Happy Pride 2019!

can't believe I nearly forgot to share this

Top 12 alternatives to Photoshop for digital painters and illustrators

Hello there!

Yes, we haven’t done this in a while… but our inbox and chat are swamped with questions on the subject, so this article was very much needed.

it’s a simple list of art apps, but we know you love those :D

Enough with the intro, here it is, a list of twelve art apps you may want to check out.

ArtRage is an art program for beginners and professionals. With its minimal interface, it’s easy to keep the essential tools at hand without stealing space from the canvas. Panels can be moved around and tools can be customised. We all know how important it is for digital artists to be able to modify brushes!

Pros: easy to use; friendly interface; essential tools from professional apps available; available for iOS, Android, Windows and Mac

Cons: it may get sluggish with big files and when using big brushes, but performances also depend on the running machine; limited selection of editing tools if compared to Photoshop - ArtRage is more of a painting program rather than an editing one.

Paid

ArtRage Lite is a different version at a cheaper price, mostly for beginners, but also for professionals if they need the essential.

Now free, Sketchbook is the famous app created by Autodesk for various platforms.

Pros: clean, friendly interface; easy to use; professional features; autosave feature

Cons: lack of official tutorials; doesn’t offer as many tools as other apps (it’s down to the essential); paid subscription in Adobe style for Enterprise License

Free and paid

Black Ink is a powerful little program few actually know, but there’s a reason: this isn’t your classing drawing app. What’s cool about it is the vast selection of special brushes, completely non-realistic, and definitely able to boost your creativity.

Pros: vast selection of customisable brushes; excellent performance

Cons: not very easy to use; non-intuitive interface

Paid

This is probably the most complete software for painting, drawing and animation. It was originally known as Manga Studio, but with its updates and addition of features, it became Clip Studio Paint. 

This doesn’t say much about the quality of the features themselves considering the affordable price (if you haven’t used the app yet, that is), but among graphic apps, this one is the top seller.

Pros: professional features for illustrators; layout tools for comic/manga artists; 3D reference models; customisable tools; various sales with special prices

Cons: the interface may not appear intuitive at first; the program may lag (again, performance also depends on the running machine)

Paid

GIMP is the famous open source image editor originally created for GNU/Linux and available for OS X and Windows. 

Best known as Photoshop’s main competition, this is a manipulation program for both beginners and professionals who love design.

It offers many professional features, making the program a powerful tool.

Pros: professional editing tools; supports different formats; supported by different platforms; active community

Cons: in spite of the simple design, many options are hidden and it takes time to discover all the features; slow startup

Free

Krita is an open source painting app created by artists for artists.

Pros: easy to use; intuitive interface; great brush workflow; brush stabilizer; customisable brushes; general good performance; very enthusiastic, although small, community

Cons: it may be slow or even crash depending on the running computer and the app’s version; very few editing tools compared to Photoshop

Free

MediBang Paint is a free and light app for drawing and painting, perfect for manga and comic creation.

Pros: vast selection of brushes; cloud sharing; friendly, minimal interface (non-desktop app); also available for iPad, iPhone and Android

Cons: requires an account to use all features; non-intuitive interface (desktop version)

Free

Mischief is a sketching app with essential tools, useful for brainstorming and ideation.

Pros: infinite drawing canvas; friendly interface; easy to use; cheap pro version

Cons: few updates; offers only the essential (but that’s the point); no editing/adjustment tools

Free and paid

Corel’s jewel, Painter is the most famous software that offers digital tools able to give a traditional feel to brushes and canvas.

Pros: different selection of media; many professional features; PS-friendly

Cons: certain brushes may work slow; not easy to use at first; the software may crash (this is the most common report); pricey

Paid

Paintstorm Studio is a professional software for digital painting. It’s focused on the use of brushes and blending, which makes the software a little gem in the digital painting field.

Pros: good brush workflow; brush stabilizer; “close gap” feature; customisable interface and tools; professional features; affordable price

Cons: non-intuitive interface (desktop version)

Paid

Procreate is the powerful drawing app for iOS. 

With the very sensitive Apple Pencil, Procreate is so easy to use that many artists chose the iPad over the most famous graphic tablets.

Pros: friendly interface; makes it easy to organise files; excellent brush workflow; customisable brushes; video recording; affordable price

Cons: hidden features; only available for iPad

Paid

SAI is a simple app for artists who want to focus on painting and drawing. 

It’s well known for its good pressure support and its essential tools for manga artists, but SAI can be used by any kind of artist who wants to paint.

Pros: easy to use; friendly interface; light software; customisable brushes; tons of (non-official) tutorials

Cons: limited selection of tools, even basic ones; limited canvas sizes and uses; it might crash from intensive work, especially with big canvases and brushes; supports only RGB colour mode; lack of support

Paid

HONOURABLE MENTION

Many call this app an advanced PaintTool SAI, and for a reason. FireAlpaca offers almost everything PTS has and more.

Pros: friendly interface; brush stabilizer; lineart selection; customisable brushes

Cons: no colour slider; limited brush control; although more advanced compared to PTS, the features are quite basic.

Free

We hope you’ll find this list useful. 

If you think there are other apps that should have made this list, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Thank you and peace out,

G&M

Other articles:

10 inspiring and helpful YouTube channels for digital artists

6 inspiring Art Podcasts for digital artists

7 amazing Photoshop extensions and tools for digital artists

Oh, this is incredible.

Improv swing dance to a Todrick Hall song?

And they killed it!

*thanks to the people who pointed out my oops

Le Figaro have a newly published photograph from inside Notre Dame shortly before the roof collapsed, as molten lead fell into the nave. (+)

‘Do not ask your children to strive’ by William Martin

HOW DO YOU DO GRADIENTS IN PAINT LIKE THAT???

okay first off thank you for reminding me i was going to make a tutorial

So what you do is take your canvas (any size) and draw a diagonal line across it like so (can be any colors)

(Protip- hold shift while dragging the line tool to get a perfect diagonal)

Then go to the resize panel, resize by pixels, and change the horizontal size to 1 (TURN OFF ASPECT RATIO or it will make your entire canvas super small)

it will make your canvas the skinniest thing on planet earth but now what you do is go back to the resize panel and change the horizontal size back to what it was originally (in my case 576 but it works with everything)

and now you have a gradient made entirely in paint! super clean too

on the right is an example of one made with 3 lines (red, purple, pink) as an example of one with more than 2 colors if you want a smoother gradient. experiment! get wacky with it!

Now obviously with the gradient it gets hard to draw on (especially if you're going to be fillbucketing stuff) so under the cut is a bonus tutorial on how to transfer a drawing to a background (yippie!)

Start by drawing up your whatever on a seperate canvas but one that's the same size as your background

Do note that the way this works you have to make your color 2 on both canvases the same color and one that's NOT used in your drawing, else it becomes transparent- if you want to keep the color 2 white on both, make sure to color all white parts on your drawing with a very very slightly off-white to prevent this

Ctrl + A to select everything on your drawing canvas, then go back to your gradient and (making sure transparent selection is on) paste it in

Move the drawing however you want if it's not perfectly centered, add whatever else you want, and bam you're done

paint has a lot of cool tricks like this and when used it becomes as easy as any other program (save for, well, multiple layers)