Hello c: I have been wanting to do some minor art of my own but I don't know what programs are best compared to others. I will be honest, if there is a super rad program that is close to a paid tablet or something, I will go for that first lol However, I was curious as to what different things everyone uses/ prefers & their experiences with them.

i've used paint tool sai for...... 6-ish years now?? wow how time flies and really like it!! it's super straightforward and there's tons of tutorials! not to mention all the brush customisation options and just....... everything lmao, it's a great program imo~ it's not free tho ;;

out of the free ones i've heard a lot of really good stuff about firealpaca but never used it personally there's also krita which i tried to get into but nghh from my limited experience it's not very user friendly :c i know a lot of people really like it tho!

oh and there's also gimp i guess but i wouldn't recommend it for art tbh but as a poor man's photoshop it's pretty useful for image editing and stuff :>

good luck with your digital art endeavours! o/

I'm super glad you mentioned krita. I kinda did a bind search for programs & that was one I clicked. I'm going to need a user friendly program lol

I MEAN if it's your first program maybe you might find it a bit easier?? i'm just so used to sai at this point that switching to anything else is just.......... not easy lmao

oh and as for the paid ones there's also clip studio paint which is supposedly really good, but i never tried it personally i think it might have a free trial tho!

I use Photoshop CS6 for years now which I'm comfortable with but before I got it I used Gimp, FireAlpaca and Sai which I didn't like much as much I wanted too. I tried out quite some programs before I found the one I liked :)

(And I have used Paint as well but that was before I had a drawing tablet haha).

So I went out & bought a Wacom tablet & my sister was awesome enough to download sai for free to my computer. I learned a hard lesson that I wasn't going to get far without either lol Now I just need to practice. I'm soo not used to this medium

About a month ago i bought a Huion Giano. Which is wireless and it works pretty good.

Before that I was just using my mouse to draw and I used a free program called Medibang Pro. Though right now I have been using Paint Tool SAI.

Paint Tool Sai has a really easy to understand interface, and I think you can find like a cracked version of it somewhere, that's what I did lol

A tablet is definitely a must when it comes to digital art, though of course there's always a few exceptions who draw with a pad or their mouse 8D But using a tablet makes things definitely easier, since you just get to hold a pen instead of having to use your hand in a position you normally wouldn't draw in.

I use Wacom Intuos Pro (Paper Edition, so transforming trad sketches into digital ones is more effortless), but I've been trying to save for a proper Cintiq for work and school reasons.

SAI is a very good program and my fave as well, since it has such a smooth system and creating brushes is relatively easy (and the program itself isn't very heavy, so it runs quite well even on older systems). I also use Photoshop CC, but I vastly prefer SAI when it comes to painting.

I've also heard good things about FireAlpaca as well as using Autodesk's Sketchbook and/or Procreate on iPad Pro!

Good luck and have fun practicing! ❤️ It'll take some time to get used to the feeling but soon it'll feel like the most natural thing in the world c: