Art Cetera Forum

I'm looking to get back into some sketching and cartooning (not to say that I'm a remotely any good, but it's an outlet, and I fear I'm going to need a good outlet in the coming months).

My iPad Pro from 2015 has largely given into its geriatric malaise and barely functions anymore. Instead of dropping that kinda of cash for a new one and new pencil, I got myself a newer low-end Wacom tablet with a screen. Not that it wasn't great, but this feels much more natural to me than the iPad ever did.

I don't do as much graphic work as I used to, so I canned my Adobe subscription when I saw the inevitability of the hoisting some well-branded petards were about to engage in and chose to steer clear. I've since purchased and now use Affinity suite, which I like a lot on the big screen, but it's a little cumbersome on my new Wacom tablet.

All that said, does anyone have a recommendation for a good sketching/drawing software for cartooning? I'm been looking into Clip Studio Paint Pro and will probably try the trial this weekend. I really just want something with a clean interface since I'll be on that small tablet, but would like for it to have some power under the hood overall.

Any input would be appreciated! Thanks in advance!

I'd be curious for recs on this as well. Funny enough, about this time last year I fell head-over-heels in love with sketching again on paper. I switched to sketching with a ballpoint pen and I don't know if it was the pen or just trying anything different, but it unlocked something and I 've gone back and forth with paper and Procreate/iPad ever since.

Someday hopefully Procreate will bring their magic to desktops! Especially now that they've made a very public "anti-AI" stance, but until then, we need something for sketching!

Let me dig around—I'll try to get a list going.

Make sure to share some of your sketches! Do you block out time for it or is it more random?