A very off topic question

So I bought myself a cheapo drawing tablet and have been trying to teach myself how to draw and I was wondering if there was an art program y’all recommend?

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A lot of my artist friends say SAI paint tool. Older sibling who’s a professional does illustrations in photoshop.

Clip Studio Paint is 100% the best and cheapest art program out there.

When I first started my digital art journey, I began with Photoshop and transitioned to Paint Tool SAI, but both programs were missing some pretty significant tools. So far I’ve found that CSP pretty much has anything you could possibly need.

Good luck on your art journey, whatever you choose to use! :purple_heart: :art: :paintbrush:

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GIMP is a great free digital art tool. Procreate is a cheaper option, as far as paid programs go.

GIMP is pretty useful but I can totally understand this perspective and agree with it.

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It depends on your budget. Photoshop is The Real Deal, but it’s quite expensive and almost nothing in it is going to be useful to you at this point. There’s something to be said for leaning on the thing you’d graduate to, though.

SAI seems to be really popular with amateur artists since (last I checked) it was around $50 for a copy. It’s also pretty ubiquitous, so you’ll find a lot of tutorials for it.

If you don’t have the budget for software, though, Krita is an open-source alternative. Some people will recommend Gimp, but that always struck me as closer to MS Paint than what you’re probably looking for.

I’m not exactly like, good at art yet either, though, so take my recommendations with a grain of salt. These are just the impressions I get.

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If you are a student you can get all of Adobe creative suite for cheap. I got a year for 80 dollars.

I use like an 8 year old version of GIMP because I fear change.
It works pretty well. Though the older versions do freeze up a lot ;L
Its also free.

Okay thank you all. Gonna try the suggestions when I get home

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There is a lot of awesome software out there, and I’d say in part it all depends on what you want to do and your end goal. I can offer my take on the three I use regularly.

Photoshop: It is awesome, and many people use it. If you start in it you will find easy access to a lot of tutorials. Photoshop is used in many studios partly because it’s good, and partly because Adobe has a great marketing department that get’s the software out there to schools. You start off learning in it during art school, and it’s just easier to stick with it once you move to professional work. Downside, it can be expensive, and to start probably has a lot of tools you won’t use. If you do pick it up, I’d recommend grabbing extra brushes from places like DeviantArt or something as the default ones are pretty dull imho.

Clip Studio: My personal favourite, and it has a lot of tools that make workflow easier. It seems to be a less popular software in NA, so a lot of the tutorials are likely to be in Japanese or another language other than English. If you plan on ever drawing comics, the ability to set up your pages and spread with crops marks and bleeds right in your drawing software is amazing. The ability to drop in and pose 3D models also cuts down on time spent making a complex scene with multiple people.

Corel Paint: Yes, Corel is still around and has its own niche. I’ve found it’s more often used by traditional media artists who are for one reason or another switching to digital. It has its own community where you will also find good tutorials and support getting started. This really depends on what your end goal is - for the usual “digital painting” you see around the internet, it is good but other software can do the same at a fraction of the cost. If you’re looking more for things that can simulate traditional media, Corel does that really well. I find the end result of its oil paint and water colour paint tools are really close to the effects I can get with actual paint. All with the added bonus of an un-do button which is sadly missing in real life. :stuck_out_tongue:

These are my two recommendations and the two I use for commissions and personal art work. Both have their own unique features, pros and cons. I would suggest maybe running a trial of each to see which one you might like best to start with.

Clip Studio Paint - Inexpensive. There are sales on this program sometimes that marks it as low as $15. The program has a lot of bells and whistles. Downloadable brushes and other content you can use. If you want something that has a lot to offer, and don’t mind taking the plunge into learning all the features it has and how to use them, them Clip Studio Paint is the way to go - and honestly it’s worth it.

Paint Tool SAI - It’s light-weight and also inexpensive. Doesn’t have all the bells and whistles Clip Studio Paint has, but the program is pretty beginner friendly and is pretty straight forward. I know quite a few professional artists who still use it over CSP. Customize your own brushes and the like. If you want something pretty basic and without a lot of things being thrown at you at once in a program, I suggest SAI.

I cannot recommend Photoshop just because they do charge you a monthly subscription fee to use their product last I checked. Also, I remember hearing something about it being against their ToS to use any of their older programs now. They just want you to subscribe monthly plain and simple. I personally don’t feel like PS is worth it, especially when you have amazing programs like SAI and CSP.

Don’t get photoshop it’s branded, overpriced garbage and you’re paying for the Adobe name. GIMP is the exact same program with a different UI and it’s completely freeware.

It’s one downside is that if you are used to Photoshop’s UI, then the GIMP UI will take a lot of getting used to, but once you get the hang of it it’s perfect for everything and does just as much as Photoshop can do.

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Krita- It’s absolutely free and I’ve been using it for my Smash brothers related comic. It’s a ton of fun and very intuitive. Simple to learn.