TheVirtualInstructor Blog

The digital age is well upon us and many artists are creating artwork or ehancing artwork using software designed with the artist in mind.  Many of us are aware of the big players like Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter, that sometimes can be out of the price range of some artists.  Although if you are a student or a teacher, you may find that you can get some great deals on these products.  If you are not sure whether you’re ready to take the plunge into the realm of digital art, you may take a look at some of the free drawing and painting programs that are free to download.  I’ve included a list of some of the ones that I know about.  Feel free to leave a comment with others that I may have missed.  Using theses free programs will give you a chance to experiment and decide if digital art may be something that you want to pursue.

Free Software for Drawing and Painting

Gimp -

“GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.” -From Gimp Website

Google Sketchup-

“Model anything you can imagine.

Redecorate your living room. Invent a new piece of furniture. Model your city for Google Earth. There’s no limit to what you can create with SketchUp.

SketchUp makes 3D modeling fun.

We believe powerful software can also be a pleasure to use – the secret is intuitive tools that work the way you think they should. Apparently, millions of people agree.” -From Google Sketchup Website

Project Dogwaffle-

“Project Dogwaffle version 1.2 (this freeware version) is based on the powerful achitecture of  Project Dogwaffle 2.0.  It’s a light, yet powerful tool for artistic expression.  We felt that the aging prior free version (v1.11b) was in need of an update, since it was written for earlier operating systems and we wanted our new users to have the speed and power of our newer software architecture. ” -From Project Dogwaffle Website

Artweaver-

“Artweaver lets you paint creatively with the help of a huge range of painting tools. You can create sketches from photos or just experiment with colors.”- From Artweaver Website
Free Trial Adobe Products- Check out the Adobe products(Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash) for free with these free trials.
Free Trial Corel Products- Check out the Corel Products (CorelDRAW, Painter) for free with these free trials.

Now that you’ve inked that drawing quickly in Adobe Illustrator with the blob brush tool, why not add color quickly as well with the live paint bucket tool.  The live paint bucket tool allows you add color to any vector object in no time.  Simply select what vector that you want to add color to, select the live paint bucket tool and your color, and paint.  This tool will save you loads of time over using the pen tool to define your objects.  Use it in conjunction with the blob brush tool to add highlights and shadows to your drawings quickly and easily.  This new lesson covers the basics of using the live paint bucket tool to add color to your drawings.  It also explores how the blob brush tool can be used to add depth to a drawing by allowing you to add highlight and shadow to the drawing.  To see the full lesson as well as the video demonstration click here-> How to Use the Live Paint Bucket Tool

Check out a little blast from the past with this promotional video “tape” for Adobe Illustrator…

Using the blob brush tool in Adobe Illustrator to ink digital drawings will save you loads of time compared to the more traditional way of inking with the pen tool. Using the pen tool does give you incredible control over the stroke applied, however, it does require that you to take the extra step of adding the stroke to the line. Not to mention all of the frustration that the pen tool can cause for newbies to Adobe Illustrator. Using the blob brush tool also allows for users to ink in a more traditional manner. This is especially true if you are able to draw with a graphics tablet. When a graphics tablet is used in conjunction with the blob brush tool, the user is able to take full advantage of it’s capabilities by applying the pressure option. When this option is implemented, the stroke changes according to the pressure applied to the surface of the tablet. This results in a stroke that rivals the marks that are possible with the pen tool, just in half the time. To see the full lesson as well as a video demonstration of this tool click here->How to Ink with the Blob Brush Tool