One of the main reasons people are afraid to try the free and open source operating system Linux is that they worry it doesn't provide the tools they need to perform their work. Artists are especially concerned about this. Adobe Photoshop has become the industry standard for image manipulation, and programs like Adobe Illustrator and Corel Painter dominate the rest of the visual arts.
These programs have a ton of features, but their code is so bloated that they can only run on the newest of machines. Plus, Adobe Photoshop has grown so expensive that they've given up on charging people to own the program and moved to a subscription model. Personally, I can't stomach the idea that I'll lose access to my work if I miss a rent payment.
My wife uses Corel painter for her playful illustrations. At least it's not a subscription program. Still, it's always grinding to a halt while it dials up to its corporate mother-ship for updates and notifications.
The good news is there are open-source alternatives to programs for the visual arts.
Today I felt like messing around with my Thinkpad X220T, which came with a built-in Wacom tablet screen and stylus. It's a used machine that I got for just $200 on eBay. It came with Windows 10 but I wiped it for a full install of Linux Mint a year ago.
I'd heard of a program called Krita which is highly regarded for digital painting. As an open-source program, it's completely free to download, install, and use, and you'll never have to worry about paying for updates, or being locked out of your work by some new version.
The process for downloading and installing Krita in Linux Mint is extremely simple. You just open a terminal and type sudo apt-get install krita. Then you enter your system password. That's it! (Believe it or not, installing just about any program within Linux is that simple!) Within five minutes you'll have a fully featured suite of painting tools at your disposal. You'll see it in your menu when you click MENU -> GRAPHICS.
This is a serious painting program with all sorts of options for brushes, wet or dry media, layers, and tons of stuff I don't know about. Despite all this power and flexibility, I was able to start having fun with it immediately, without watching a single tutorial. If I had a child, giving them an old computer with an installation of Krita would be a fabulous way of keeping them busy making art.
Now, I don't share these scribbles because I expect any kind of praise for them. I just wanted to show the kind of fun you can have from the get-go with this program. I played around for about fifteen minutes at most with each of these pictures. Again, I've got no previous experience with this program.
It was especially satisfying to feel how the brushes worked with the pressure-sensitive stylus and screen of the Wacom digitizer on this Tablet. The texture and sensitivity made the act of painting feel amazingly realistic. (Yet if I'd wanted to play around with real media, I'd have made a huge mess in my office, not to mention spending a ton of money on brushes, canvas, and oil paints.)
You can also paint with the mouse, or with your finger if you have a basic touchscreen.
Even for someone who can't render a figure or a face to save my life, it's fun to smear some paint around while listening to music or watching TV. And I do enjoy experimenting with texture, pattern, and color. As Kurt Vonnegut said,
I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.
Anyway, my farting around got a lot easier once I discovered this chart of keyboard shortcuts for Krita. (So I guess I did look to one web-page for instruction.)
Please don't take my scribbling as an indication of Krita's limits. This page on Deviant Art shows some examples of what talented artists can do with this free, open source tool. Lots of digital artists - and a whole French university have dropped Adobe products to work exclusively with Krita and other open source tools.
I should also mention that you can try Krita for free on a Windows PC. There's a version available to download on the Krita Foundation's web site. I found running it on Windows to make it a bit slow and unresponsive, but again, my computer is five years old. A beefier machine might provide better results in Windows. The same machine ran it without a stutter under a Linux installation.
If you've followed my tutorials for making a USB-bootable thumb drive to try Linux (links below), you can run that sudo apt-get install krita command from within your live session. You'll just have to install it again after a re-boot, although you can save your work to an external drive as described in those articles.
Are you a digital painter? What tools do you rely on? Which tools do you enjoy the most?
If you give Krita a try, please let me know how it turned out! Share your work in the comments, if you like.
My tutorials for installing and running Linux from a live session are below:
Try Linux For Free By Creating A Bootable Thumb Drive - For Absolute Beginners
Running A Linux Live Session From A Thumb Drive - A No-Fear Tutorial For Absolute Beginners