Simple Easy and Free Art Application recommendations

[Jwebtoons]

Hello, I'm looking for some recommendations for an art application for me to use to draw. I've been using MS paint to do my work on my art skills as shown below

It has it's own limitations like the images becoming blurred and pixelated when you save them, making it impossible to continue working on it. I understand it's a matter of pixels vs vectors.

Right now I'm looking for something easy to navigate like and free like MS Paint. I've checked a few applications and tried watching tutorials, but find myself unable to do even the basics due to not being able to navigate the application even with help from tutorial videos. They don't really provide good instructions. Especially when you just want to know where one thing is.

[jwabeasley]

There are many programs you can use to make art that are much better than MSPaint! For basic image editing, I use Gimp, and for drawing I used myPaint quite a bit in the past. These days I work mostly traditional, though.

Do you have a digital drawing tool or are you using your mouse?

[Jwebtoons]

I use laptop. It's not just a matter of better. Is it easy to navigate? Or at least are the tutorials helpful?

[justincarbunkle]

GIMP and Krita are the best free programs I know of.

Krita is more used for animation, but I've been able to make good drawings in it. Shouldn't take long to learn the UI.

[vapidink]

MediBang is free and has a good interface that makes it easy to get the hang of. GIMP can be a bit too complicated because of the layout, but it's good once you get the hang of it. Krita is also a solid choice with a good variety of brushes.

[XiuLyn_12]

If you're looking for a free art applications that provide a lot of manga features, I highly recommend Medibang! I think it's very beginner-friendly and user-friendly. I got used to the buttons and everything within a week!

The app provides "How-tos" so you can simply search if you are having a hard time navigating the buttons and their purposes.

[wolflu66]

Do you have a drawing tablet? Or do you draw using a mouse?

I think a good drawing tablet is also very important. Although some people do draw with a mouse, in the long run it can cause significant damage to your joints and tendons.

As for software, many people above have already mentioned it. I believe that as long as it supports basic layer and mask functions, it's actually sufficient. You can try them all and then choose one that feels comfortable for you to use.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Right now I'm looking for something easy to navigate like and free like MS Paint. I've checked a few applications and tried watching tutorials, but find myself unable to do even the basics due to not being able to navigate the application even with help from tutorial videos.

So you want an easy-to-learn but slightly elevated free art program...might I recommend https://getpaint.net/

I moved to it from MS Paint like a billion years ago when I was a kid, thinking I could use it as a stepping stone to the fancier art programs...and as it turns out, I actually really like its simplicity and have no desire to move on from it. ^^; Just to show what I mean, here's what its interface looks like:

It's a lot less daunting than other art programs I've seen...you can easily trial-and-error your way through understanding everything on the screen. And once you're through with the basics, there are plenty of fancier tools for you to explore under Adjustments and Effects.

It has it's own limitations like the images becoming blurred and pixelated when you save them, making it impossible to continue working on it. I understand it's a matter of pixels vs vectors.

So, uh...this is a bit of an aside, but are you sure this isn't just user error? ^^; Like, are you saving things as JPG/JPEG instead of PNG?

I had that exact same problem when I was a kid, which is how I ended up learning what file types are and what they mean. For example, JPGs give smaller file sizes, but at the cost of introducing artifacts to the saved image...I'm guessing those are the 'pixels' you mentioned. This is why you'll re-open the image to find a bunch of multicolored pixels smeared all over everything, particularly fine lines and details.

PNGs, on the other hand, preserve the image as-is. If you save a drawing as a PNG, it will look exactly the same next time you open it up. However, this comes at the cost of bigger file sizes when the image is large enough/contains a large enough range of colors.
As someone who works with aliased lines and rendering almost exclusively, my color ranges are very small anyway, so that trade-off is perfectly acceptable to me. But if you work like most digital artists do...with HUGE canvases, anti-aliased linework, painterly-styled rendering with lots of blending...it's gonna add up, and you're gonna have single images that are 5MB and above. ^^; Paint.NET gives you the option to work either way, so it's really up to you what you're comfortable with there.

[ThunderChicken]

5MB and above? Heck, some of my images done on Krita are upwards of 500MB (I like a big canvas, usually 6000-10000 pixels wide)! Those are the raw image files (.KRZ format in Krita), with all layers and transparencies intact. Even when I save them as PNG copies the files are typically 50MB. Once I shrink them down to Tapas-friendly dimensions (940 pixels wide) their size drops considerably, but so does their detail.

The thing I don’t like about PNG is that it doesn’t preserve layers, which is why my “main” files are always raw. PNG is good for internets but not so good for images you might want to edit later on. That’s also a limitation with MS Paint in general - although you can finally use layers to draw you cannot save the image with layers intact.

To the OP: I recommend paint.net, and I also recommend Krita. It does have a learning curve, but if my fifty-year-old ass can learn how to use it anybody can. I’ve used MS Paint (or variations of it before it was MS, and was just Paint) since 1990 or so and I still use it for some things that I find easier to do than with Krita (such as text).

[DokiDokiTsuna]

5MB and above? Heck, some of my images done on Krita are upwards of 500MB

Holy--
...Thank you for that bit of perspective. O_O (Tbh I didn't know what a normal filesize was for a normal digital artist, so I just used one of my reference images for an estimate ^^; )

500 is actually insane, though...imagine needing an entire gig of storage for every 2 full-size raw images.
┌(。Д。)┐How do you feasibly store years' worth of art; do you just compress the hell out of everything?? Multiple Google Drive accounts??? Start buying external drives????

The thing I don’t like about PNG is that it doesn’t preserve layers, which is why my “main” files are always raw.

To add to that: Paint.NET also has program-specific "raw" files that preserve layers; they are called .PDNs. And they are larger than normal images...although when I use them, they're usually 3-5MB. ^^;

[bulgariansumo]

If you want something like Photoshop without having to subscribe to Adobe (or get it through other means), there's Photopea, an in-browser art program. The ads can be a little intrusive and sometimes it lags, but it's almost 1:1 with Photoshop, which makes it easy for me to use. Plus it has line stabilization, which my version of PS did not have.

I also second Krita. Personally, I struggle to get into it, but it doesn't have ads, I don't think it has a lagging problem, and you can use it if you want to branch out into animation.

[Leyelle]

medibang paint is free and pretty easy. Idk if it would be better or worse than MS paint for you though. it's not great, but i've been able to make professional illustrations with it

[ThunderChicken]

I don't compress anything, because I don't want to lose quality on the original drawings. I've got a 2TB SSD in my laptop and 1TB of MS OneDrive storage and so far I'm not close to running out of room. Remember, a terabyte is a thousand gigabytes, so a terabyte drive will hold roughly 2000 500MB files.

Here's an example of how big the files can get. Here is a raw image, with all layers intact

This is greatly reduced to show in this forum, though. The image shown in the forum is 690X481 pixels. The actual image is these dimensions (note the file side is shown as well):

And here is a section of that image which, if I did this correctly, should show at 100% scaling in the forum and should show the actual detail it was originally drawn with (EDIT - the forum actually reduced this one too, it was posted at 657X564 but the forum reduced it to 582X499):

One of the reasons that I use such a large canvas is the native resolution of my laptop's monitor:

At 3840X2400 this is actually more pixels than 4K (4K is 3840X2160). This resolution on a 16" laptop display produces incredibly fine detail, with a pixel density higher than that of Apple's Retina display. Drawing big allows me to zoom right in and add tiny details, even though they will be lost when the image is uploaded to Tapas.

[Jwebtoons]

Pardon my french but WTF?! You were right about that PNG vs JPG/JPEG thing! Every where I searched said that MS paint had that pixel issue I mentioned, so I thought it didn't matter what you saved it as. I was always told growing up that JPEG/JPG is better than PNG. So I never really worked with PNG files

Thank You so much! You really changed things for me!

I still want to check out the recommendations everyone sent me. Nothing wrong with expanding the horizons. Y'all are some awesome people!

[Jwebtoons]

I draw with a laptop. The little touch pad thing below the keyboard is what I use. Never really drew with mouse. Can that still mess up my joints and tendons?

Cause now I'm concerned about the future.

[ThunderChicken]

MS Paint is probably the worst offender for introducing artifacts when a file is saved as a JPG. I don’t know what compression method they use, but it is horrible and has been horrible since the first day Paint started supporting JPG, way back in the Windows ‘95 era. Other programs such as paint.net will still introduce some artifacts (you’re compressing your image, you’re gonna lose something) but it’s not nearly as bad as MS Paint.

Jpg’s to drawing are like MP3’s are to music. It saves space (although in this era of high bandwidth and cheap storage that’s not super necessary anymore) but it ruins the quality of the original uncompressed work. With MP3’s you’ll lose parts of the music as it’s “clipped”, with JPG you lose image details and clarity. And with both, once those original bits are gone, they’re gone forever.

[kyupol]

I use ibis paint.

Pro:
- very easy to use

Con:
- lags if you spend more than 3 hrs on a project

[DokiDokiTsuna]

I've got a 2TB SSD in my laptop and 1TB of MS OneDrive storage and so far I'm not close to running out of room. Remember, a terabyte is a thousand gigabytes, so a terabyte drive will hold roughly 2000 500MB files.

That's...cool, but...at present I have over 5,000 files on my laptop right now. And that's only my own drawings...that's not counting reference pics/stock images for my video editing, or any of the other heftier things on my computer (like music, videos, or my downloaded games). It's also not counting anything I drew before I got this computer in 2014...

...You've really given me something to think about. '_' I didn't think much about the way I drew, other than the occasional self-deprecating joke about visible pixels, but now I'm starting to think I literally could not afford to make my art any other way. ^^;

Thank You so much! You really changed things for me!

Very glad to help

[wolflu66]

If your finances aren't too tight, I think buying a good drawing tablet would be more beneficial for your work.
If your budget allows, you can consider Wacom brand products.

Additionally, some digital artists have now moved all their work entirely to iPad. iPad + Procreate (app) is also a good choice.