10 Apps for Restless Illustrators

Inspiration comes in all sorts of places, so best be prepared for it. Here are 10 apps for illustrating on the go

A sketchbook and a drawing tool have always been indispensable to artists, needing to be within their reach whenever the opportunity arises. New technologies have relegated paper to second place, favoring smartphones and tablets. Numerous apps are available to allow us to create illustrations with excellent results. Here is a small selection we believe you need to know.

Procreate

One of the best-known apps around, Procreate's technical and aesthetic features–along with its creative excellence–have earned it an Apple Design Award. It is a comprehensive app that allows us to create digital illustrations to a very high resolution.

Comic draw

Recommended by comic book lovers, this app has everything you need to create your own illustrated stories from brushes and tools to develop characters, to type fonts and other elements to frame the dialogs.

Tayasui Sketches

The biggest advantage of this app is the extensive variety of brushes and the highly realistic images you can achieve working with them. A special mention goes to the color wheel and the watercolor and acrylic brushes.

Adobe Illustrator Draw

An extension of Adobe Illustrator always within reach, this app allows you to create all sorts of vectorial illustrations on the spot, as soon as a big idea comes to mind.

Autodesk SketchBook

Extremely handy for those who want to sketch quickly and those who wish to illustrate with a professional and artistic finish. Available free, the subscription gives access to an exciting selection of brushes.

Zen Brush 2

The selection of brushes may be limited, but this app offers an infinity of possibilities. The drawing techniques embedded in the app imitate perfectly the effects achieved with traditional Chinese and Japanese brushes.

Inksist

This app offers illustrators many useful and customizable professional digital drawing brushes, layers, and tools with a simple interface. Available for iPad, this app also comes in a Mac desktop version.

Autodesk Graphic

This app has the features of a desktop application. However, you won’t need to sit at a desk with this app, as you can work on your vectorial illustration on the go from a tablet.

Concepts

Based on pencil drawing, this app has earned followers both among those who use it to sketch technical drawings and those who appreciate the digital texture of the graphite for their artistic illustrations.

Adobe Photoshop Sketch

In the same way that Adobe has developed an Illustrator app, it has done so for Photoshop. Besides working using Photoshop's habitual features comfortably, you can quickly forward work from one device to another.

What digital tools do you tend to use to work on your smartphone or tablet? Let us know in the comments below.

You may also like:

- Creative Portrait Illustration with Procreate, a course by Samuel Rodriguez.
- Design of Characters for Video Games and Apps, a course by Nicolás Castro.
- Illustration Techniques and Styles with Procreate, a course by Óscar Lloréns.