Free Draw and Painting software to download for desktop computer.

Free paint and drawing applications to download
Free paint and drawing applications to download for Windows PC, Mac OS X, macOS and Linux

Not enough with photos editor software? You want to paint or draw a sketch, create a digital art or you would like to do an oil painting canvas or a watercolor paint ?

 

Below are few freeware for painting and drawing on the computer, with many different kind of brushes to achieve the kind of paint artwork you would like as a professional digital painter, there is even a special paint software for kids and children, and some freeware dedicated to the vector graphics.

 

1) ArtRage a free painting and drawing desktop software.

ArtRage a very beautiful user internface to paint and draw
ArtRage a very beautiful user internface to paint and draw

If ArtRage is an impressive piece of software, it has painting and drawing functions that are even more impressive!

 

For Windows, Mac OS X, iOS and Android user, ArtRage is very beautiful and user friendly.

 

If you download the demo version you will not be limited in time, ArtRage gives you access to the full features, the few limitation are mainly 1280 pixels max to save your masterpiece, and some others which are listed on their website.

 

ArtRage offer a full range of realistic traditional tools, i mean they are real world painting tools like oils, watercolor, pencil, ink pen, chalk, airbrush and a lot more with unlimited layers.


2) Krita Free Sketching and digital Painting Software.

Krita a very nice painting and drawing freeware
Krita a very nice painting and drawing freeware

If Krita is a true freeware for digital painting and drawing purpose, you can also edit your photos, but do not forget it's main purpose, it is a painting and drawing application.

 

For Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and Windows, Krita is fully featured with brushes, pencils and a lot more for concept art, texture or matte painting, illustrations and comics. What's good to know is that Krita is an open source project with a very active community !


3) FireAlpaca Free Digital Painting and Drawing Software.

FireAlpaca is an easy to use painting and drawing freeware
FireAlpaca is an easy to use painting and drawing freeware

The FireAlpaca freeware is an open source project for painting, sketching and drawing with a very friendly user interface and a very active community to help you in many languages, FireAlpaca does also animated GIF.

 

For Mac OSX and Windows FireAlpaca is fully featured with brushes like pen, pencil, airbrush or watercolor which are ready to use in the default setting and you can customize your own pen or brush.

 

You can easily add various effect brushes with your own pattern or image. For example symmetric brush and rotational symmetric pattern brush will create an unexpected pattern. The snap tool draw concentration lines and speed lines, perspective snap tool will helps you to draw a perspective view.


4) MediBang Paint Pro is a Digital Painting and Drawing Freeware.

Medibang paint pro is a free digital painting software
Medibang paint pro is a free digital painting software

Obviously MediBang Paint Pro is a fork of FireAlpaca, it is an open source painting and drawing software and it is free (the Pro in the name might make you think about money, but no worries it's FREE).

 

For Mac OS X, Windows, iOS and Android this free painting software is user friendly and easy to use, but it is also well featured with brushes, pencil, pen, watercolor, oil brush because it comes loaded with all of FireAlpaca features and more.

 

MediBang Paint Pro is featured with cloud storage to allow you to work also as a team.


5) Inkscape is a Digital drawing and vector graphic Editor Freeware.

Inkscape a powerful vector graphic editor freeware
Inkscape a powerful vector graphic editor freeware

The Inkscape project is a vector artwork drawing freeware extremely powerful Inkscape can be compared to Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw and its use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).

 

For Windows, Mac OS X, and many Linux distribution, Inkscape is made for designers of all kinds, it is a true professional tool for vector drawing publications, but it is not really user friendly.

 

If you are not sure or feel a bit disoriented with Inkscape i recommend to read and follow the Inkscape blog regularly updated with a lot of "how to do" tips and tricks.


6) Project Dogwaffle 1.2 Freeware version paint program.

Dogwaffle 1.2 is the freeware version of Dogwaffle paint program
Dogwaffle 1.2 is a freeware paint program

The Dogwaffle 1.2 is not just a stripped version of the commercial version, but Dogwaffle 1.2 it's a light, yet powerful tool for artistic expression, painting and drawing with the possibilities to extend it's drawing and painting abilities with many free plugins like Penny Paint (free).

 

For Windows only, Dogwaffle 1.2 is already very well featured with different brushes and special effects like watercolor, oil painting, pen, pencils, pastels, airbrush, etc... for your digital painting masterpiece.


7) Tux Paint Free Painting and Drawing program Kids and children.

Tux Paint a freeware painting and drawing for children
Tux Paint a freeware painting and drawing for children

The Tux Paint application is a freeware for your children (3 to 12 years old), it's nicely featured with different brushes and pencils and at many size.

 

For Mac OS X, Windows and Linux, Tux Paint has many preset and many draws ready to be paint by your children, it is also featured with stamps, stickers, texts, eraser and textures for the youngest kids.

 

More powerful than you can thought at the first glance, Tux Paint will reveal it's secrets to your children very quickly due to it's very friendly user interface, and plenty of graphical features for easy draw.


8) SmoothDraw a Drawing and Painting Freeware easy to use.

Smoothdraw a simple and nice drawing and painting software
Smoothdraw a simple and nice drawing and painting software

If Smoothdraw is a very easy to learn painting and drawing program, it is well featured with a huge quantity of brushes, pencils, airbrush and a lot more.

 

Sadly it is only for Windows, and as you can see on the screenshot a beginner can start to paint without being overwhelmed by this very user friendly interface and comprehensive icons.


9) LazPaint the little draw and sketch app well featured.

Lazpaint simple sketch and draw app
LazPaint a simple drawing and sketch application

The Lazpaint free application is for Windows, Mac OS X and many Linux distribution. Lazpaint is a bit dispatched across internet depending your operating system, for example if you are on Mac OS X you can download Lazpaint here. For Windows and Linux you can download directly on the official blog website here.


10) Rita is a limitless paint and drawing program.

Rita a simple but well featured drawing software.
Rita a simple but well featured drawing software.

Rita is a shareware with no limitation in time or tools, which let you plenty of time to test Rita.

For Mac OS X, Rita does not restrict a paint or a draw to a given size nor a specific resolution, the size is limitless, which means you will never see a pixel because Rita use an infinite canvas, allowing you to create an image as big as you want or to zoom in as far as you want.


11) Pencil2D free drawing and animation cartoon application.

Pencil2D animation and draw application
Pencil2D animation free software

Thinking of making a manga? Pencil2D animation is an open source freeware that can solve your manga problem.

For Windows, MacOS and Linux, this free drawing software can animate your draws, whatever they are vector image or bitmap made.

Pencil2D lets you create hand drawn animation, a cartoon in other word, using bitmap and vector graphics at the same time.


12) VPaint free 2D and 3D drawing and animation application.

VPaint freeware open source vector drawinf and animation
VPaint freeware open source vector animation

The VPaint freeware, is an open source vector drawing and animation. VPaint has many useful tools like the free form sketching, the sculpting tool, painting tool, animation, onion skinning tool and many more (see View/Advanced... in the top menu).

 

VPaint is fully supported by Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, though the latter (Linux) need to have the dependencies manually installed or, you can compile it yourself if you are a computer nerd.


13) DrawBerry a simple vector drawing application.

DrawBerry a free vector apps for Mac
DrawBerry a free vector apps for Mac

With DrawBerry, you get all the possibilities the vector drawing application can do for free, DrawBerry might be the easier to use but still a powerful application exclusively for Mac users.

 

If you don't need applications as big as Inkscape because you want to create some simple (or less simple) vector draws, DrawBerry is your choice.


14) Paint X Lite a painting and drawing application.

Paint X Lite free drawing application
Paint X Lite free drawing application

The Paint X Lite freeware is a surprisingly good drawing and painting application well featured with a lot of different brushes and other tools to paint or to draw. You can even use Paint X Lite to edit a picture once you understood the way it work.

 

Paint X Lite for MacOS and Mac OS X users, is already well tooled, and its limitation is to have a little watermark in the bottom right corner (almost invisible).


15) Mischief free a sketching and drawing application.

Mischief free is a sketching application.
Mischief free is a sketching application.

The Mischief free application has some limited tools, that it's paid counter part fully use. Mischief is an infinite canvas sketching and drawing software, infinite canvas even in the free version.

 

For Windows and Mac OS X, Mischief has a very clean and easy to use user interface. When i visited the website, it's security certificate was expired (because it use a https secure connection). I downloaded, directly from their website, tried and tested the software, it's a nice one and i didn't encounter any problems. So, maybe, they just forget to renew the certificate, Mischief is also on the app store (so controlled by Apple) and given the huge number of video tutorials on Youtube, i felt very confident, just to let you know.


 You might also be interested with the last entry in the blog:

Photophone: How to do great pictures with a smartphone or a tablet.

How to take great pictures with a smartphone
How to take great pictures with a smartphone?

Nowadays our smartphones have more computer power than a 10 years old desktop computer. Technology is evolving fast and with it, the language acquiring new words like  smartphone or selfie.

We are doing everything with our phone, from a GPS assistant to photograph or record a movie in full 1080p HD, even post processing those images, and i don't even speak about playing 3D games, read some news on internet and so on...

 

At the end, when we compare how we use our phone the most, in percentage, I can say safely that we barely use it to call someone, and this is why i call mine a photophone.

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