11 Best Mobile Drawing Apps for Professional Artists in 2023
For artists and illustrators, finding the perfect drawing app can elevate your work and creativity. With the right app, you can sketch, illustrate, and paint from anywhere using your smartphone or tablet.
The Best mobile drawing apps provide tons of customizable brushes, advanced features like layers and blending, and intuitive interfaces designed specifically for artists.
Best Mobile Drawing Apps 2023
Whether you’re an amateur doodler or a seasoned pro, these powerful mobile drawing apps offer the tools to bring your visions to life.
Top 11 Best Mobile Drawing Apps for Professional Artists in 2023
We’ve compiled the 11 best options for Android and iOS to suit any artistic needs and skill levels this year.
1. Drawing Desk: Draw, Paint Art
Drawing Desk provides one of the most comprehensive creative experiences for digital art. It’s loaded with realistic tools to sketch, draw, paint, and animate. Key features include:
- 25+ customizable pencils, markers, crayons, and more
- Paint with over 100 different brushes
- Add effects like symmetry, kaleidoscope, smear, and blur
- Animating tools to bring your art to life
- AR mode for face painting and makeup overlays
- Color by number coloring pages
- Video tutorials for guidance
For versatile digital art capabilities from one app, Drawing Desk is hard to beat. The easy-to-use interface allows both doodling for fun as well as professional illustrations.
2. Autodesk Sketchbook
Autodesk Sketchbook lives up to its name with robust professional sketching tools. It’s optimized for drawing with no lag even on large canvases. Prominent features include:
- 190+ customizable brushes with advanced settings
- Multiple blend modes and adjustable opacity
- Layers, symmetry tools, and gradient fill
- Perspective guides and predictive stroke smoothing
- Import images to draw over or trace
- Wood, metal, and wallpaper background textures
- Share directly to Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc
For sketching traditional artwork digitally with immense control over brushes, Autodesk Sketchbook is one of the best.
3. Infinite Painter
Infinite Painter brings desktop-level painting tools to mobile. It focuses on realism with brushes that blend and smear just like real oils and watercolors. Core features include:
- Over 150 customizable brushes with texture and blending modes
- Mix custom colors on a real digital palette
- Create natural blends using Liquid Mode
- Import custom brushes, patterns, and color palettes
- Transform tools like skew, warp, and flip
- Support for extremely large canvases up to 16K
For mimicking real-world painting techniques digitally, Infinite Painter is unmatched. The ultra-realistic brushes expand the creative possibilities.
4. Watercolor Paint
Watercolor Paint authentically recreates the flowing, blending nature of real watercolors. It’s one of the best watercolor apps created specifically for Android. Key features include:
- Realistic watercolor, oil, acrylic, marker, and crayon tools
- Customizable canvas textures like paper, wood, and more
- Unique two-layer system for color blending
- 50+ customizable brushes with different shapes and edges
- Add splatter effects and gradients easily
- Import images to paint over as reference
- Share directly to social media
For watercolor artists, Watercolor Paint provides digital tools that handle amazingly like the real thing. The two-layer blending system makes effects impossible in traditional mediums.
5. Concepts
Concepts focus on sketching, diagramming, and design work. The advanced vector tools make it easy to create precise illustrations, diagrams, wireframes, and calligraphy.
Notable features include:
- Smooth and accurate pens tailored for sketching
- Infinite scrolling canvas in different paper textures
- Import images and PDFs to draw over
- Predictive stroke smoothing and stabilization
- Customizable grids, guides, and shape tools
- Share creations as SVGs for crisp scaling
For any digital drawing needing clean lines and geometric perfection, Concepts has all the vector tools to create them with ease.
6. Ibis Paint X
Ibis Paint offers one of the most versatile collections of brushes for illustration. The advanced brush engine mimics real-world painting tools for an authentic experience. Notable features include:
- Over 300 highly customizable brushes
- Realistic watercolor, oil, airbrush, pen, marker, and blending effects
- Drawing assist tools like prediction and stabilization
- Extensive layer support with blending modes
- Vector tools for creating manga, comics, and line art
- Export PSD files with layers intact
For digital illustrations from manga to portraits, Ibis Paint provides the realistic brushes and color blending you need.
7. Assembly
Assembly makes it easy to design professional logos, icons, and branding assets. It’s loaded with design elements you can customize and combine. Core features:
- 1000+ icons, shapes, fonts, and design elements
- Powerful vector drawing and text tools
- Pixel-perfect alignment and distribution
- Color palettes, gradients, and swatches
- Import images and icons to edit
- Export crisp PNG, SVG, PDF, and transparent PNG
For crafting logos and icons, Assembly eliminates the learning curve. The drag-and-drop simplicity allows quality results in minutes.
8. Tayasui Sketches
Tayasui Sketches provides an ultra-realistic set of drawing tools for iOS. The well-designed interface allows you to easily fine-tune every brush and pencil to suit your style. Key features:
- Realistic pencils with graphite shader
- Fully customizable watercolor brushes
- Natural color mixing on the palette
- Adjust size, opacity, spacing, and blending
- Huge paper textures library
- Brush editor to save custom presets
- Share sketches via email or social media
If you want to sketch and paint on an iOS device just like real-world materials, Tayasui Sketches delivers the tools.
9. Paper by WeTransfer
Paper’s simple, distraction-free interface lets you sketch seamlessly. It’s ideal for doodling and creating flow. Unique features include:
- Sketch with pencils, markers, pens, and watercolor brushes
- Straight and curved ruler tools for precision
- Smooth stroke stabilizer engine
- Simple color palette and blending
- Custom photo collage backgrounds
- Drawing tutorial guides from professionals
- Journal section to categorize sketches
Paper keeps your workspace clean so you can focus on sketching freely. For quick doodling and journaling, it’s one of the best.
10. MediBang Paint
MediBang provides customizable brushes and tools replicating traditional real-world materials. The easy interface simplifies creating detailed artwork. Key features:
- Realistic textures like fabrics, surfaces, and papers
- Over 800 free brushes with full customization
- Create and import custom brushes
- Blend modes, gradient fills, and transparency
- Perspective rulers and symmetry tools
- Comic panel tools for storyboarding
- Export PSD with layers intact
MediBang Paint makes it easy for artists of any skill level to create detailed illustrations and paintings.
11. ArtRage
ArtRage authentically recreates the experience of working with real artistic media on canvas. The realistic tools blend, mix, and smear just like the physical versions. Notable features include:
- Realistic oils, watercolors, crayons, pencils, and more
- Paint thickness, water effects, smudging, tracing, etc.
- Canvases with various textures to alter strokes
- Metallic paints and glitter tubes
- Import reference images to the canvas
- Fully custom brushes and presets
- Records entire painting process for replay
For digital painting that truly captures the feel of traditional art, ArtRage is unmatched. The tools respond realistically based on your stroke and input.
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Find Your Creative Flow with a Mobile Art App
Today’s mobile apps provide immense creative possibilities right on your smartphone or tablet. For artists, the advanced tools make illustrating, painting, and designing easier than ever.
Powerful apps like ArtRage, Infinite Painter, and Autodesk Sketchbook recreate traditional media digitally with stunning accuracy. Easy-to-use apps like Tayasui Sketches, Paper, and MediBang Paint simplify the workflow so creativity flows. And versatile tools in Drawing Desk, Concepts, and Ibis Paint allow any type of art you can imagine.
The best part is that your entire professional art studio can fit right in your pocket. So whether you’re an artistic hobbyist or a seasoned pro, grab one of these top-rated drawing apps and unlock new creative potential in 2023. Just grab your stylus and start making digital magic.
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