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Digital artists are among those mainly responsible for developing websites, product labels or even masterpieces made with the help of specific software. Some of them have even gained great notoriety in recent years: the art of drawing and editing is increasingly valued around the world!
Mike Winkelmann, known online as Beeple, is one of these great examples: his work Everydays: The First 5000 Days consists of an image worked on for 5,000 consecutive days. It sold for US$69.3 million at a Christie's auction in 2021.
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Other authors, such as Takashi Murakami, known for his pop-surrealist style, or even Damien Hirst, a British digital artist known for his controversial approach, have also captured the spotlight – but there is still room for many others!
Do you want to know some of the best apps for drawing or painting on your smartphone or tablet? Check out the following list and turn your art into (virtual) reality:
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1 - Adobe Capture
Image: Adobe
It's safe to say that when it comes to graphic design, Adobe needs no introduction. The app turns your mobile device into a complete tool for drawing whatever you want and making advanced edits.
Adobe Capture offers a wide variety of brushes to create the perfect look for your art. Additionally, different layers can be created and worked on individually to facilitate development and editing, just like in Photoshop.
To use the application, you must have (or create) an Adobe Creative Cloud account. Download it for free on any mobile platform!
two - AirBrush
Image: TechTudo
It is an image editing and creation application, but with an interesting difference: it uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide advanced retouching tools.
AirBrush also allows you to easily remove unwanted objects from photos, such as people who have not authorized the use of their images or objects. The automatic background removal mechanism is also quite effective and saves a lot of time throughout the editing process.
Your mobile app is very well optimized and should please most designers!
3 – PicsArt
Image: Canaltech
It's not new that Adobe needed to face some serious competition – and it has arrived. PicsArt allows you to not only create drawings, but also make very beautiful and quick edits through a vast library of layouts.
Recently, the company behind the software launched an AI image optimization engine – something everyone is sure to see in most graphic design applications. Although it is still at the beginning of its development, it is already capable of delivering great results.
Its interface is very friendly and does not require technical knowledge of graphic editing software: in addition, the tutorials help a lot and there is a lot of content on the internet about how to use PicsArt quickly and intelligently.
4 – Snapseed
Image: eMania Blog
One of the main attractions of this app is that it is completely free and is quite lightweight: it takes up around 22MB of the device's internal storage and consumes few system resources to work.
Snapseed has 29 different tools and filters so you can deliver professional quality images, making it a very viable option for career photographers or even enthusiasts.
It is not as robust as the other options presented on this list (especially when compared to the paid versions of its respective competitors), but for many cases, it will be more than enough.
5 – Canva
Image: Google Play/Canva
It is not possible to talk about graphic design without mentioning Canva, one of the main competitors of the Adobe suite. It provides a little bit of everything: ready-made layouts for social networks, tools for manually drawing, AI image creation, as well as several filters that make images even more vivid.
It has a very interesting free version, as it offers a reasonable range of opportunities at no additional cost. However, if you want to venture deeper and explore all the features the app has to offer, there is the option to subscribe to Canva Pro.
Its interface is one of the easiest to use and the paid version is very accessible, making it one of the most solid options on the market.
6 – Adobe Photoshop Express
Image: Photofocus
Just need to touch up your images? Adobe Photoshop Express brings together some basic tools for this task.
Make touch-ups, remove the background from images, make collages and add makeup to selfies quickly and easily. It is an application clearly aimed at the general public, given its simplicity.
Do you want to make your Instagram photos perfect? Adobe Photoshop Express could be the ideal solution for you!
7 – Ibis Paint X
Image: MEmu
This free software was specially designed for drawing: it offers a wide variety of features that will make your creations even more special.
There are more than 15,000 paint brushes, pencils, markers and special brushes, as well as adjustment tools, inclusion of special effects or even animations.
You don't need to be a drawing expert: even beginners can start making their first drawings with Ibis Paint X!
Valuable tips for drawing and editing
Now that you have all the best software on the market at your disposal, how about putting certain attitudes into practice before starting to design and edit your images?
Think outside the box: Avoid the obvious. Try to imagine what the world would like to see: to do this, discover and analyze various works and artistic styles to create your own;
Choose your brushes carefully: Each drawing style requires the use of specific brushes. If you don't yet have much experience on the subject, look for tutorials on the internet or take courses on how to make the best use of digital tools;
Do not be afraid to make mistakes: The greatest artists in the world made big mistakes until they achieved excellence! If the end result is not to your liking, don't worry: learn from your mistakes and, if necessary, redo everything from scratch completely naturally;
Practice regularly: Even experienced graphic designers need to readapt according to updates to the software they use. In some cases, they need to learn everything from scratch because they changed applications for various possible reasons. But every artist is, above all, an adaptable being!
Leave in the comments what you think of the apps mentioned above! Is there anything else you would like to suggest? Feel free to express yourself – that’s art!
