In the world of digital painting, sketching, and illustration, there are wide varieties of tools that can be used for digital sketching and painting. However, the most popular of them is Procreate. A tool that is exclusive to the Apple platform and has been used by artists for years. Here, we have put together a list of alternatives applications that can replace the famous Procreate application on your device.
WHAT IS PROCREATE?
Procreate is a very powerful graphics painting and sketching application that has been specifically made for the purpose of creating beautiful digital sketches, stunning paintings, and inspiring illustrations. It is a tool for creative professionals. It is a commercial app that was designed in response to the iPad and is only available for use on the iOS platform. However, it also has a version available for the iPhone and it is called the Procreate Pocket which also gives its digital artists access to the capabilities of the app although on a smaller screen. Both Procreate and Procreate Pocket is available on the App store
20 Procreate Alternatives
The hugely popular software company created this mobile version and it is relatively just as effective. It has 24 built-in pens, pencils sizes, and different watercolors that feel real which can be created on a resizable canvas. You can also tap into a library of Photoshop brushes just by importing them into Sketch.
Adobe Photoshop Sketch is available on both the iPhone and iPad and is free to purchase.
This is an absolutely free app that is only available for iPads and can be downloaded on the Appstore.
It has tools for artists that paint, draw, create animations, and comics. It has dedicated functions for comic illustrations, animations and sketches that include the drawing of moving illustrations and various brush sizes that will ensure you can enjoy draw and sketch anywhere on your iPad
Jump paint is a free app whose primary function is for creating official manga illustrations. It has a myriad of painting tools, free brushes, layers and backgrounds that are completely free to use. With over 50 different types of brushes which include the round brush, flat Brush, Pen, acrylic brush, Soft brush and pastel, it is a powerful tool for illustrators and manga creators alike. It is free and available on both the iPad and the iPhone.
With a solid 5 star rating on the Appstore, Autodesk SketchBook has been a powerful alternative to the Procreate app for a long while. Besides its numerous brush tools, it has an impressive perspective guide, infinite, customized, and constrained grid tools and curve rulers that would otherwise be impossible to draw with an ellipse tool.
It is absolutely free on Appstore and available for both iPhone and iPad devices.
Inspire Pro has beautiful, powerful and meticulously designed aesthetics that were specifically engineered for the iPad device. It is an incredibly fast tool for artists that create realistic paintings, drawings, and sketches. Amongst its arsenal of qualities is a proprietary painting engine Sorcery™ that captures the full potential of the GPU to render brilliant brush strokes.
It is only available for the iPad and is $9.99 dollars on the Appstore.
6. Drawing Desk: Draw & Paint Art
It is built specially for sketch lovers and has a unique collection of tools that function for that purpose. Amongst them are 3D brushes, Glitter brushes, NEON Brushes, Pattern brushes Gradient brushes, Shapes, Smooth erasers, Typography tools, Smudge tool, Realistic brush tools, different rulers, Water Color, and much more.
It is completely free on the Appstore and is available for both the iPhone and the iPad.
With over 1000 tones and brushes, the MediBang Paint is a formidable illustration tool for the iPad. It has an intuitive user interface that includes backgrounds, numerous brushes, textures, and comic book fonts for users to utilize. Medibang also has a massive online art community that allows its users access to cloud storage and also to share their work.
It is absolutely free on the Appstore but is exclusive to the iPad.
Doodle Art has an easy-to-use user interface that is very convenient and requires no instructions to use. Amongst its functions are full customization of color, importation of photos from the native gallery or by capturing a photo with the device’s camera, rotation & scaling of photos, over 200 free stickers, brush size change & opacity settings.
It is free on the Appstore and available for both iPhone and the iPad.
Infinite painter offers superior brushes that include around 200 beautifully crafted brushes for every kind of artist, a wide variety of brushes that interact very realistically with paper textures, different watercolors that bleed out, and a selection of paint brushes that mix perfectly with the paint on the digital canvas. You are given the freedom to create your own custom brushes and edit over 60 brush settings.
It is free on the Appstore and available for both iPhone and the iPad.
Concepts is an industry standard application that features an infinite canvas for a myriad of realistic pencils, pens and brushes that move with precise pressure, tilt and velocity, a tool wheel or bar that can be personalized with brushes and presets and a customizable gallery.
Concepts has a very beautiful COPIC color wheel and an alterable vector-based sketching system that can either be moved, organized or transformed.
It is free on the Appstore and available for both iPhone and the iPad.
It is the go-to app for vector artists who want to engage in digital drawing. It provides customizable brushes for drawing, designing and styling your art. There are also basic shape stencils that will speed up design work such as circles, squares, various polygons, and even speech bubbles for comic creation.
It is free on the Appstore and available for both iPhone and the iPad.
12. Artstudio Pro: Draw Paint Edit
Artstudio Pro is one of the most formidable and powerful painting and photo editing app that includes a myriad of assets and give users access to import resources in the most popular formats such as (ACO, ABR, PAT, TPL, GRD, ASE). Users are also given instant access to millions of patterns, brushes, gradients, fonts, and color swatches.
It is priced at $11.99 on the Appstore and is available for both iPhone and the iPad.
Bamboo gives you the ability to turn your iPad into a virtual paper notebook that captures your ideas anytime when you take notes, sketch, or draw. You can create your own colors, annotate with photos, and add nuanced details. It functions just like a pen and paper would.
It is free on the Appstore and exclusive to the iPad.
Tayasui Memopad sports a gorgeous minimalist user interface that is designed to scale nicely the iPhone to the iPad thereby offering the same look, feel, and experience on every device. Among its features are 9 very realistic tools, automatic save to native photo library, a super fast share menu and quick imports of photos as background.
It is free on the Appstore and available for both iPhone and the iPad.
15. Assembly: Graphic Design & Art
Assembly allows you to create icons, logos, illustrations, and more by using it’s powerful, convenient features.
You can create, cut, intersect and combine shapes thereby creating complex groups of graphics. You can also produce quick, rough-out designs just by mixing up pre-existing designs and elements. There are also basic primitive designs and intricate and ornate illustrations.
It is free on the Appstore and available for both iPhone and the iPad.
Pixelmator is a formidable, full-featured, multilayered image editor that allows you to, alter, touch up and enhance paint, images, ?and sketches, including creating advanced image compositions. It also utilizes iCloud allowing you to create, edit, share, and store all your images.
It is priced at $4.99 on the Appstore and available for both iPhone and the iPad.
17. Da Vinci Eye: AR Art Projector
Da Vinci Eye is a digital tool that has been specifically created for non-digital artists. Used by a myriad of creatives, ranging from painters to bakers, Da Vinci Eye doesn’t just function as an AR tool for tracing, it also has a multitude of tools, drawing lessons, daily prompts, and a supportive art community.
It is $4.99 on the Appstore and available for both iPhone and the iPad.
ibis Paint X is a versatile drawing app that has, within its properties, around 379 brushes, 46 screentones, 66 filters, 27 blending modes, a medium for recording drawing processes, unique stroke stabilization feature, a myriad of ruler features that include Symmetry rulers and Radial Line rulers with clipping mask features.
It is free on the Appstore and available for both iPhone and the iPad.
Paintstorm Studio is an app designed specifically for professional digital painting of any type, style, genre, level and technique. Its properties include unbridled control of all brush options which includes bristles of any texture, form and kind, stroke post correction and all parameters that are binding to the perspective. It also has a dynamic interface and custom panels.
It is free on the Appstore and available for both iPhone and the iPad.
SketchClub allows you access to a bank of fantastic tools for sketching, drawing, doodling, painting, and editing photos while also keeping you motivated to continue creating. It has a community where daily challenges are set daily to stimulate creativity.
It is priced at $2.99 on the Appstore and available for both iPhone and the iPad.
While Procreate might have ushered in the age of digital painting and illustration, the apps listed above have taken it notches further. A great number of the apps on this list are specialized apps that have very specific uses and meet specific needs. Most fill an art niche that users in that genre would immediately recognize and they have communities where users can communicate, learn, share, connect and even store their works.
Digital imagery has indeed come a long way since the first iPad.
