Drawing has been made easy to do with digital drawing apps such as Procreate which provide artists with an avenue to create lovely and realistic designs anytime and anywhere. It eliminates the struggle of carrying multiple tools and equipment to finish an artwork.
Procreate is the most intuitive and powerful digital illustration app with over 200 versatile brushes and up to 4k ultra high definition canvases. It has 50 levels of undo and redo, 128 layers, Gaussian and motion blurs, 64-bit color, Perspective, Isometric, 2D, and Symmetry visual guides with QuickShape feature that allows users to freehand-draw perfect shapes. It’s a complex tool, so it may be a little difficult to understand at first if you are in just for simple doodling. Although Procreate is a fantastic app that covers all the artists’ needs, we still need alternatives. Why? Because of two issues. Firstly, Procreate is a onetime paid app of $9.99 with no free trial to test run it. Secondly, it is designed exclusively for iPadOS, and although there is a version available for iOS, the company has no current plans to create a version for Androids and Windows.
However, here are some Procreate alternatives for Android, which will give you similar results to Procreate.
Before we start, let me recommend you another article I have on the best Procreate alternatives for Windows, in case you wanna know how you can develop your artistic skills in your Android tablet or phone.
Alternative Drawing Apps to Procreate
Adobe Photoshop Sketch is one of the numerous creative apps from the Adobe software. It is a drawing app that offers you free realistic drawing tools like pencils, erasers, fountain pens, ink brushes, etc. that interact naturally with the canvas. In order, to be able to use this app you’ll have to sign in with your Adobe ID or create one for free.
Another feature of the Adobe Photoshop Sketch is the Split View which you can use to keep your toolbox and your drawings side by side on the same screen. It also has the Behance integration that helps you see what other artists are up to in the community, and you also get feedback on your art when you upload it to the community. It has built-in graphs and grids, which help you see your 2D drawing in a 3D perspective view. You can also send it to Photoshop for further editing. Although you’d have to have a creative cloud plan for this feature, you could also download a free trial.
Adobe Photoshop Sketch is a free app, which also gives you 2GB of free online storage to store the images you make. Although Procreate happens to be the most popular digital drawing application in the app store, Adobe Photoshop Sketch seems to be catching up very fast with its unique features. Some of these features may vary with the device you’re using, be it iPhone, Android, iPad, and iPad Pro.
2. Huion Sketch – Paint and Create
Huion Sketch is a free complete pocket art studio with professional drawing and painting tools that allow you to create amazing paintings, illustrations, and sketches. It has a simple user interface with a broader space to create and think with 41+ delicate brushes that help you make incredible artwork. It has a broad colour palette and up to 100 layers with access to over 20 layer blend modes for industry-grade composition.
It also has multi-touch gestures(zoom in/out) which help to maximise work efficiency. It has dramatic finishing effects like HSB, RGB, and Gaussian filters with adjustments. It is a minimalistic app which is very handy with a clean and intuitive UI. It is available for Androids and Huion tablet models with upgraded firmware.
ArtFlow is a free, fast, and intuitive drawing and painting application that helps you explore your imaginations on a digital sketchbook. This drawing app has 100+ brushes and tools, including fill, smudge, and eraser. It has 10+ layer filters including HSV adjustment and more with a very accessible user interface that’s fast and fluid.
It also has pressure and touches stimulation for Samsung smartphones with the S pen. It has canvases of up to 6144×6144 with 50 layers with a GPU accelerated paint engine.
Although it’s a free app, some advanced features require pro license in-app purchases. Note that a single license purchase will activate all devices associated with your Google account.
PaperColor is a free hand-drawing app with a plethora of tools to perform your art efficiently. It imitates the real paintbrush to graffiti, draw, and doodle. It has different types of paintbrushes and a colour library.
This app also teaches you how to draw using a photo as a base map and making it transparent, which makes you able to paint and draw over the image. It also has a handwriting signature in the pen after you have finished the drawing. You can go ahead to sharing the completed art with your friends.
Tayasui Sketches is a free, versatile, and user-friendly sketching app with the most realistic digital drawing tools which helps you create unique sketches and vivid paintings, and cheerful illustrations on the go. It has over 20 ultra-realistic tools with incredibly real watercolour wet brushes, a brush editor, and a colour eyedropper. The presence of a simple U/I user with every tool is designed to be beautiful and easy to use. It has different layers that can be combined to refine the most complex drawings. It is inexpensive and clutter-free.
It is available on macOS, iOS, and Android. The Pro costs $9.99 per month with a free trial of 7days.
This app is a version of Adobe’s common vector-based drawing application that allows you to draw on the screen of your Android with a variety of tools. It has several brushes that can be customised; that is, you can texture your lines, change their thickness, and colour within them with these brushes. It also has 10+ layers, and you can upload your projects in the adobe community and get feedback from other app users.
It is a free app with which you can create professional compositions right from your Android device. You can also transfer files to other illustrator software and have them edited there.
Concepts is an application where you can sketch, design, and illustrate your ideas on an infinite canvas. Its features include brilliant brushes, five layers, and a whole lot of creative freedom. You’re not required to have an account or even signup; all you have to do is download the app and start sketching.
Concepts are available for free on Windows, iOS, and Android. The free version has some basic features, but if you want more features and brushes, you’ll need to purchase bolt-ons.
Ibis Paint X is a high functional drawing app with incredible features with which you can use to create detailed designs. With this app, the possibilities of creating fantastic art are endless as you get to choose between a variety of canvas, 379 brushes, 46 screen tones, 66 filters, and tons of various tools that you can put together to your heart’s content. You can share the design process for anything you create with a large community and also check out how other users make their designs and maybe even learn something in the process.
It is a free app, and it is available on iOS and Android. Although if you decide to go for the paid version, which is ibis Paint, Prime membership costs $2.99/month while Remove-Ads Add-on costs $7.99(one-off payment).
It is a free digital painting and comic creation software that is full-featured and allows creators to draw anywhere they want while saving all of the features of the desktop versions of the software. This app comes with over 100 free brushes(Airbrush, Pencil, Watercolor, Flat Brush, etc.) to draw a variety of colour spectacles. It has over 800 tones, free comic book fonts to make your comics look professional, dialogue with speech to text, snap guides to make drawing easy with a straightforward and user-friendly interface.
MediBang Paint is free and runs on Windows, iOS, macOS, and Android.
Infinite Painter is a painting app with advanced tools to create images. Its features include 160+ natural brush presets, and you can create your brushes, a simple and organised user interface that makes everything easy, gradient and pattern fill, transform tools. You can add images from your gallery, camera, or the web and you can share your projects to the Infinite Painter community, PEN.UP, or Instagram.
It is a free app, and it is available for Android.
SketchBook is a free digital sketching app that allows you to express yourself with creative sketches and art, regardless of your skill level. It has different painting tools such as Paintbrushes, Color picker for tools & background, Gradient, Fill tool, eraser, Selection tool, and Layers editor. You can also sketch over images, texts, drawings, and shapes.
It is a free app since all of the Pro version’s features have been added to the Free version. It is available on Windows and Android.
These apps are some of the best Procreate alternatives, and they will make a massive difference in your work. We do acknowledge that at the end of the day, the use of these apps is relative to the artists’ personal choice. We do hope that this list helps you choose the best sketching app that suits your sketching needs.
