What drawing software do you recommend?

[4-So]

Dear friends, adversaries, and friendly adversaries, I just got my old PC finally set up, cleaned up, and my Wacom is updated and ready to go. Somehow, I forgot that, oh yeah, you'll need a program to actually make stuff. Looks like I had Clip Studio Paint and Adobe Creative both installed at some point - they don't work, need license, etc. - but I noticed Humble has a deal right now where I can get Corel Painter and Corel PaintShop Pro for $30 (along with whatever else is in the bundle.)

Any recommendations?

 

[Regulus]

I use Clip Studio, personally. If you've had it in the past, you probably still have access since it's a perpetual license and they only recently switched to a yearly update model.

 

[4-So]

I'm pretty sure I had the trial version of Clip Studio installed; believe it came with the Wacom. $50 for a perpetual license isn't bad, though. And it looks like you'll get version 3.0 for free when it launches. Going to keep that in mind.

Bongo pointed me toward Krita, which is the low, low price of free, so I've been playing around with that.

The most daunting thing is that I dropped out of university back in 2000 where I was a graphic design major, shifted gears to computer science, and basically didn't look back. The art program left such a bad taste in my mouth, I left art behind almost completely, only doing the odd thing every few years because someone requested a piece as a birthday present or something similar. So I'm basically coming back to it after 20+ years, there's a lot of rust to knock off, and a lot of this digital stuff just wasn't a thing or financially feasible back in 2000. So I'm having to learn the programs - what the fuck is a layer lulz, etc. - while simulatenously trying to find my way back to being a creative.

 

[Regulus]

I was kind of in a similar boat. I got a BS in graphic design/studio art in 09 and got a Cintiq as a pooled gift from my family a year or two later, but I pretty much stopped drawing outside of doodling during a boring 3rd-shift prepress operator job I had for a few years. I felt pretty guilty that my family spent all that money on a cintiq that I barely used... I think it was mostly a combination of burnout and being kinda dissatisfied with the "art scene" I was exposed to in college. I tried to get into digital illustration a few times throughout the years but I couldn't really ever get it to stick. The experience just wasn't quite the same as drawing on paper.

I did eventually pick things back up in 2017 or so when I started doing Inktober every year. I bought some Copic markers in 2020 and had a lot of fun with those for a while, then picked up Clip Studio on sale and tried doing a digital version of an inktober piece from a few years before. Since then I almost exclusively draw digitally. Things like line variable stabilization really helped me get over the different texture of drawing on a screen. And it's kind of hard to go back now that I'm dependent on a lot of the tools digital offers, lol.


Anyway, I haven't used Krita myself, but I've heard good things. Supposedly the user interface quality and performance are both kind of mediocre compared to paid programs, but it's otherwise supposed to be pretty great for the price. There are also some features I've heard about that I'm kind of interested in trying.

Also, CSP tends to go on sale a few times a year, so it might be a good idea to just use Krita until then anyway.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

Clip Studio seems like kind of The Standard that folks use nowadays, but I personally use Krita because I'm a hashtag broke bitch. You already seems to be there, but it's what I'd recommend to anyone like Just Starting Out because it takes some of the sting out of the financial math of digital art.

So I'm basically coming back to it after 20+ years, there's a lot of rust to knock off, and a lot of this digital stuff just wasn't a thing or financially feasible back in 2000. So I'm having to learn the programs - what the fuck is a layer lulz, etc. - while simulatenously trying to find my way back to being a creative.

Extremely good news on this though is that there's such a wealth of information and tutorials available on things like The Youtube that didn't exist back in 2000, it's great.

bought some Copic markers in 2020 and had a lot of fun with those for a while,

this is unsolicited but if you ever decide to go back to alcohol markers you should check out Ohuhu, which provides shockingly high quality markers for a fraction of the price of Copics