Best Free and Paid Drawing Apps for Android OS

Ollie Mattison

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Becoming a visual communication expert takes years of hard work. Achieving this goal is impossible without spending thousands of hours practicing and polishing your skills. Drawing apps for Android OS enable you to keep practicing your drawing and painting skills whenever you have some free time.

Google Play hosts hundreds of apps that offer at least some drawing and painting features, which can make the search for a drawing app that meets all your needs a total nightmare. That’s the reason why we selected the top ten drawing apps for Android that will enable you to unleash your creativity and turn any idea you have into a beautiful picture you’ll be proud to share with your friends.

10 Best Free and Paid Drawing Apps for Android OS

We’ve shortlisted ten drawing apps you can use for anything from casual doodling to creating highly detailed hyper-realistic digital paintings. However, their capabilities and the range of drawing and painting tools they offer varies, which enables you to choose the one that is best suited for your artistic needs. Let’s take a look at what best free and paid drawing apps for Android OS have to offer.

1. ArtRage

Price: $4.99

The versatile set of painting and drawing tools ArtRage app offers includes an Airbrush, a Paint Tube, or Oil Brush among others. There is a variety of settings for each tool that can be easily adjusted to the needs of your project. So, you can use paint thinner to make the paint less thick or increase and decrease the softness of a pencil tip.

Besides the color, each of these drawing and painting tools also adds texture to your images. In addition, ArtRage lets you create as many layers as you want and it grants you access to a broad spectrum of blending options so that you can stack multiple layers on top of each other. All images you create with this drawing app can be exported in JPEG and PNG formats.

2. Autodesk SketchBook

Price: Free

Like its desktop version, Autodesk Sketchbook for Android OS provides a natural drawing experience. Although the app’s interface is minimalistic, you can still access all tools quickly or activate perspective guides.

There are more than a hundred brushes to choose from, and the app also allows you to create and save new brushes. Moreover, you can scan your hand-drawn sketches with your device and continue working on them in Autodesk SkecthBook. There are no limitations in terms of the number of layers you can add to an image and you can quickly switch between different blend modes. The app crashes often and you may face lagging issues if you choose to install Autodesk SketchBook on your Android device.

3. Adobe Illustrator Draw

Price: Free

Creative industry professionals who are already using Adobe’s Creative Suite can benefit from installing Adobe Illustrator Draw on their Smartphone. The app enables you to work with vector images, while you can also import stencils that have basic shapes.

The canvas can be magnified by 64 times so that you can execute your drawings with great precision. Each layer you create can be renamed, duplicated, merged, or adjusted and you can create an unlimited amount of layers in each project. In addition, you can use the images from Adobe Stock for free to create your designs. Adobe Illustrator Draw lets you save images as PSD files that can be opened in Adobe Photoshop, Capture, Illustrator, or Photoshop Sketch. 

4. MediBang

Price: Free, but offers in-app purchases

This is a lightweight app that lets you create comics from your tablet or your Smartphone without using too much processing power. MediBang lets you create drawing from photos, and it grants you access to a broad range of brushes you can use for free. What’s more, there’s an abundance of speech bubbles, color tones, and textures to choose from, so that you can easily replicate any style of cartoon drawing or develop your own.

MediBang lets you create comic book panel layouts with ease as you just have to drag your finger across the canvas to generate a new layout. In addition, the app features a rich selection of predesigned backgrounds that make the process of creating a cartoon much easier. The only downside is that MediBang contains ads which can slow down your workflow.

5. dotpict

Price: Free, but offers in-app purchases

Digital artists in need of an app that lets them create pixel art are going to love using dotpict. The app lets you switch between different colors of pens which speeds up your drawing process.

The app’s features enable you to undo or redo any action you take, zoom in on the canvas, switch the grid off and on, and save or share your images. Unfortunately, dotpic doesn’t have much more to offer other than these features, so you can’t use it to create complex multi-layered designs. Even so, it is a great drawing app for novice users who are just entering the world of digital art. In addition, you must make in-app purchases in order to be able to use all of the app’s features.

6. ibis Paint X

Price: Free, but offers in-app purchases

With more than 80 million downloads ibis Paint X is easily one of the best drawing apps on Google Play. The app grants you access to more than 2500 royalty-free visual materials, hundreds of different brushes, over sixty filters, and over twenty blending modes.

Ibis Paint X is also equipped with the stroke stabilization feature, as well as a number of clipping mask options. What’s more, the app lets you choose between different types of rulers, such as Symmetry or Radial Line rulers that give you more precision during the drawing process. Each session in ibis Paint X can be recorded which makes this app a great choice if you want to create painting or drawing tutorials.

7. InspirARTion

Price: Free

Enthusiasts and experienced digital artists can produce digital paintings and drawings from their Smartphones and tablets if they decide to install the InspirARTion app. The impressive selection of brushes and a broad color palette enable you to create any artwork you want. Moreover, each brush comes with a number of special effects so that you can choose the style of your images.

Uploading a photo and using it as a template for your digital artwork is also an option InspirARTion offers. This feature may help you produce realistic drawings and paintings and reduce the amount of time you need to complete a project. However, the app’s file-sharing capabilities are limited as you can’t share your creations on social media directly from InspirARTion.

8. LayerPaint HD

Price: $6.99

A fully customizable interface, pen pressure, or Wacom tablet support are just a few reasons why LayerPaint HD is among the best drawing apps for Android devices. In addition, you can import PSD files you created in other image processing apps and continue working on them in just a few quick taps.

The large selection of brushes enables you to have complete control over the visual style of the images you’re creating, and the app also lets you use foreground and transparent color brushes. Adding layers to canvas requires a minimum amount of effort and you can change the blend mode or apply effects to each layer you create. Moreover, LayerPaint HD grants you access to a variety of filters that help you make visually striking images.

9. PaperColor

Price: Free, but offers in-app purchases

Learning the basics of digital drawing and painting is much easier with an app like PaperColor that offers a base map. The paintbrushes this drawing app offers can imitate graffiti, a pencil drawing, or any type of doodle, as you can choose from a variety of paintbrush styles. You can also import photos and draw over them if you want to replicate the scenes you photographed.

PaperColor is equipped with different types of rulers so that each line you draw is perfectly straight or curved, depending on your needs. You can add a handwritten signature to each image you create with this app, and share your creations with your friends on social media. Keep in mind that you have to make in-app purchases if you want to use all drawing and painting tools PaperColor offers.

10. RoughAnimator

Price: $4.99

Instead of drawing just one image, you can draw hundreds of images with RoughAnimator from your Smartphone and turn them into action-packed animations. The app’s timeline doesn’t limit the number of layers you can add to each image and it allows you to adjust the length of exposure of each drawing you add to your project. These features enable you to create straight-ahead and pose-to-pose animations effortlessly, while you can also import videos if you want to make a rotoscoping animation. The app supports Samsung S-Pen as well as a number of other pressure-sensitive devices.

RoughAnimator also lets you import audio into a project and lip-sync it to your footage. The resolution and frame rate of your animations are fully customizable so that you can adjust them to your project’s demands. All projects created in this app can be opened in Adobe After Effects, Toon Boom, Adobe Animate, and other animation software products.

Conclusion

Producing digital artwork from an Android OS device has never been easier because there are so many different apps that enable you to draw or paint from your tablet or Smartphone. The majority of the drawing apps we included in this article can be used just for fun or for professional purposes.

However, your choice of a drawing app for Android devices depends on your digital drawing and painting skills, since there is no need to opt for an app aimed at professionals if you just want to create doodles. Which of the ten best drawing apps for Android are you going to choose? Leave a comment and let us know.

Ollie Mattison

Ollie Mattison is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Ollie Mattison