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digital art tools i use

as someone who has been making digital art for more than a decade, i've had plenty of time to figure out what works for me. i've compiled a list of some favorites here to hopefully help you out. almost everything is free, so have fun!

table of contents

hardware

don't feel like you need anything high-end to start drawing. the great thing is that since it's such a simple act it can be done pretty much anywhere... you don't even need hardware necessarily, just paper + pencil and a camera if you feel like sharing.

currently i use a somewhat vintage wacom bamboo cth-670 which i like very much. before that i used a monoprice, which was perfectly functional but just didn't feel as nice to touch.

my pc's specs are modest. i do think having decent specs is important, i used to draw on a laptop with a 2 gb of ram which was a GENUINE NIGHTMARE of constant freezing and crashing. with this i can comfortably multitask most things excluding video games and video editing.

drawing software

krita is by far the best program i have ever used for drawing and painting!! its UI is extensively customizable so i only see the tools i actually use, and it's very easy to toggle them all away to just the canvas. i just love it, unless i need a specific function exclusive to another program i'm never switching again.

kolourpaint is by the same team as krita so they have a similar feel and it is similarly customizable (nowhere near the degree that krita is, but it's there). an ms paint-like is essential for just doodling imo.

i've tried a lot of software a few times before dropping it. some i've used somewhat consistently in the past are:

other software

having a good toolkit can cut out a lot of frustration and add a lot of fun.

reference collage software

pureref offers nice auto- (or manual) arranging of pasted images on an infinite canvas. i've tried various infinite canvas apps for various reasons and this is the only one i haven't uninstalled.

krita also has a built-in reference image feature which is definitely useful, especially for colorpicking.

a snipping tool

cause sometimes you only need a small part of an image. the obvious choice is good old microsoft snipping tool . see script to capture multiple monitors individually with xfce4-screenshooter , which includes my snipping tool script. other than xfce, kde's ksnip is also really nice.

a color picker

gcolor3 - gives a good amount of options without being overwhelming, and i love the saved colors feature!!

microsoft powertoys also has a very nice and simple colorpicker in it.

notetaking software

it's kind of ironic how beneficial i find obsidian for art given that its focus is on plain text. i use it mostly for taking notes on software so no cool little trick or buried menu item goes forgotten. its image support is good enough but where it really shines is the organization, split between hierarchical folders, tags and frontmatter.

brushes, textures, palettes

brushes

textures
color palettes

backup protocol

nothing on the internet is permanent, and your art is valuable. please be careful with your art files, don't just post them and forget!

it's a good idea to export your art occasionally as you work in case anything happens to your project files. (i haven't needed it yet, but part of the reason i like krita is that their project file type is essentially just a .zip that you can use any archive manager to extract an image of the merged visible layers.)

i sort my art in folders by year and a folder that has every finished piece i've uploaded that mirrors my deviantart gallery, which is easy to maintain thanks to gallery-dl . in these folders are all different versions of my art, the project files, and sometimes random stuff like photos of paper drawings or reference images. it's almost absolutely everything i've draw that year, from 2 minute doodles to paintings i spent hours on. every winter i have a scanning party that takes way too long. since it's a private collection, i save as much as i possibly can.

one of the strengths of computers is automating tasks. you can back up frequently without even thinking about it. i used to use the program syncfolders to automatically copy/paste on a schedule (no weird, unreadable backup file types, just jpegs and pngs as it should be). i now use rsync .

datahoarding like this isn't just to satisfy some psychological need (although it also definitely is that) but in my experience is quite practical. how can you let old ideas rest and resurrect them when the time is right if you don't have a home for them?