What's the best free drawing computer program?

i'm looking to start drawing, and i need something better than MS Paint. i don't wanna spend money, but i want something that will let me draw better quality pictures even though i'm a crappy artist, hehe.

Hi there Norm.

Need a pointer? I'd say Jasc's Paint Shop Pro is a good choice.

It is sharewere, but comes with uncrippled features, and you can test it for a while.

If you want to go full-free, Pixia could be a viable choice.

Best luck!

I have Paintshop Pro 7, Master Cartman. While I've only used it twice thus far to color two of my pictures, the program proved to be verstile, easy to use, and it gave me the results I wanted. Paintshop Pro 8 is out now, so I wouldn't know how much better it is than PSP7, or if you should even invest in it. You can/should probably get PSP7. Alot of the times it can happen that an artist prefers an older program over a newer, updated one, as the old program works fine for them and their needs. Scamwich for example has used the industry standard (Photoshop) but used older versions for a while before upgrading to the newer ones.

Sometimes it can work out to an artist's best interests to become fimiliar with a program before upgrading to the new one that is available (if any).

But since money is an issue for you, as it is for me also and alot of people, I'd suggest Paintshop Pro 7. You can find it pretty much anywhere that would sell computer art programs, and since PSP8 is out now, PSP7 should be affordable for you.

I'd suggest that or what Kalamos suggested, and just get the free/shareware version of Paintshop. Although there are most likely some limitations to what it can do, as can be expected from something that is a free trial version or an older version. However, it might just turn out that the free/shareware version is good enough for you and you want from it/need.

Best of luck.

If money is short Paint Shop Pro is the way to go.

Another VERY good free drawing program is GIMP . It's basically a toned-down version of photoshop, but it gives you access to all the layering and transparency capabilities and such. Also, if you learn in GIMP, swithcing to photoshop when you ahve the resources will be very easy.

If I was starting over I'd go with Gimp or maybe Dogwaffle (free for a less current version). The advantage of Gimp is that it is open source and will therefore never go commercial. Also the users write scripts for it to do all sorts of tasks.

For me I've been a PSP user for some time and when a free coverdisk version of PSP5 came out that suited me.

As a person who migrated from DPaint on the Amiga (now that dates me!) I have never found anything that suited me as much as that.

Smade