Comparison of Android drawing apps

This post documents my research for finding a good drawing app for my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10 Android tablet. I will add more apps as I discover and test them.

Artecture

Pros:

-Amazing live paint mixing and realistic brushes

+Free version allows exporting to various formats including png

+Many brushes and brush options

+Good layer support

+No disturbing ads even in free version

Cons:

-No obvious way of changing the brightness of brush color (it’s easy to change the hue and saturation though). EDIT: you can change it from the paint bucket symbol at the top (confusing because a paint bucket symbol usually means a fill tool)

-Frequent crashes

-Limited size options for canvas

-No vectors

-No obvious way of transforming (rotating scaling etc) what you have drawn. You can accomplish it via copying and pasting a selection to another layer though.

-No numeric way of setting color values (makes copy pasting colors from other apps difficult.

Sketch

Pros:

+Good brush selection

+Fast and no lag

+Easy to transform parts of image

+Clear, solid user interface

+Seems very stable (zero crashes so far)

+Great layer system

+Supports pressure sensitivity

+Paid features are now available to all users.

Cons:

-Online community discontinued so the development has likely halted

-No vectors

Penup

Pros:

-Very nice paint mixing

-Amazing drawing tutorials for learning drawing

Cons:

-No layers

-No vectors

Illustrator

Pros:

-Seems quite professional

-Vector support

Cons:

-Requires CC paid subscription to be useful

Medibang Paint

Medibang Paint is not very well known in the segment of Android drawing apps, but it’s actually a very decent contender. I will need some more research before listing the pros and cons but one definite pro is that the app is free. It also seems to have free desktop versions for both Windows and Mac.

Autodesk SketchBook

I think this one is the winner here so far. It is very intuitive and seems to support most things I need.

Pros:

-Free

-Supports layers and transparency

-Advanced selection tools and the ability to transform the selection in various ways

-Good brush selection

Cons:

-No vector/svg support (but it seems like it’s on the roadmap)

One Reply to “Comparison of Android drawing apps”

  1. By reading this post, it seems that Sketch has fewer cons, and Artecture has more disadvantages. So, Sketch is more useful and easy to use. Once I should try the Sketch app. By the way, you have differentiated both very well.
    Thanks for sharing!

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