links please

My hubby is looking to get back into drawing and since I just got my scanner back up I was hoping all you wonderful artists could recomend any FREE downlaods for art programs, he is just looking for basics right now, so demo modes and the likes are fine. thank you in advance. OH he doesn't really have a style preference so all links to downloads for creating art are welcome.

Hi there,

I only got to try it out for a few minutes, but GIMP looks like a nice free alternative to Photoshop. Does your husband have a tablet? It is almost essential for digital drawings, since drawing with a mouse is like drawing with a brick. When I bought my Wacom Intuous3 tablet, it came with basic versions of Photoshop and Painter. You can also download a fully functional, 30-day trial version of Painter X from here. Hope this helps.

P.S. I could also post some links if he needs help with where to get started with digital drawing/painting.

please do!

For trial stuff outside the big 2 (Photoshop and Painter) I like:

Open Canvas currently in it's 4th version...

About $65 US for the COMPLETE program, though free to try for 30 days, and the Plus version, not sure of the difference is only $85...

There is also SAI and Artrage , of the 2, I prefere Sai...

Good luck!

Here are some links that I've found helpful/inspirational.

www.cgsociety.org - They have great forums. I especially like the anatomy section, but won't link directly because of artistic nudity. This particular thread is on getting used to working with a tablet. I'd say start from here, but there are many more tutorials and workshops.

www.conceptart.org - Similar to CGSociety. They have awesome sketchbook threads by amazing artists.

http://forums.sijun.com/viewtopic.php?t=29807 - The most awesome speedpainting thread ever! If you need inspiration, you will find it here. This thread is what got me into digital painting in the first place.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=...mp;view=videos - Bobby Chiu's digital painting videos.

http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm - A great general art lesson. I love the illustrations.

http://www.chrisbeatrice.com/a_tutorials.htm - Walk-through tutorials on great paintings.

http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/tutorials.html - Nice tutorials on light and other things.

http://homepage.mac.com/pixlart/painter.htm - The most comprehensive guide to Corel Painter I have been able to find. Painter can be very overwhelming at first because of all the different parameters you can adjust, and these tutorials go into every detail.

I could dig deeper to find some more, but I think these should keep your husband busy for a while.

Sweet! Thanks Day, for posting these in my Resources thread!

I'm wondering if the Painter tutes will work for PaintShopPro, unfortunately, it's the program I have to work with (my Sis gave it to me so I can't complain too much, it was free. )

I just want to pipe in that you can get the latest FULL versions of Adobe products totally free from their site for 30 days. You can save and export and everything.

I don't know if you meant you didn't really want to spend too much at all, or just wanted to try stuff for free and buy later if you like it.

try now, find what he likes, buy later

No problem, Angel. I haven't seen PaintShopPro so I can't say for sure, but I kinda doubt the Painter tutes will apply directly to anything else, because they go into the brush engine(very complex) and layer modes(similar to, but not the same as Photoshop) in Painter and such.

Oh I forgot to mention, Painter XI is coming out soon!

OOOO I want that, um Painter XI!!!

PaintShopPro was actually my very first program, well not counting MS Paint. It can do a lot of different things... but I wanted to learn the industry standards, so I switched over to Photoshop 6 back in 2001 and eventually Painter and Illustrator.