Sometimes you start using a piece of software and it has such a transformational effect on your process that you kick yourself for not discovering it sooner. Every artist has an app like that; a tool that saved them time, made frustrations evaporate, and made creating more natural and joyful.
In a bid to speed up that discovery for you, we’ve asked professional concept artists and illustrators which apps – some you can find on our list of the best digital art software – these were for them, and how it changed their life when they found the right one.
Some of the software on this list has a bit of a learning curve, but these packages are so much more accessible than they used to be and the time they’ll save you in the long run is well worth the investment.
01. Rebelle
Concept artist and illustrator Aleksandra Wojtas is a fan of Rebelle, a software package that specialises in hyper-realistic simulation of traditional art materials. She tells us that in her painting process, she switches back and forth between Rebelle and Photoshop. (Read our Rebelle review and the 10 Rebelle 8 features we love for more details.)
“No matter how many brushes for Photoshop I get (and I do have way too many) very few feel gritty and organic enough, and having access to so many of them often meant I used to jump into details early,” she explains.
“Doing the underpainting in Rebelle not only brings me a lot of joy, but genuinely lets me stay much looser for longer. I will switch to Photoshop for the bulk of the work, but then for details, Rebelle brings a fantastic touch of realism and just enough chaos to prevent the ‘sterile’ look I’m not going for.”
Buy Rebelle 8 Painting Software
02. Procreate
One of the best drawing apps for iPad remains the painting app Procreate, and it's a firm favourite with digital artists on account of its easy-to-use interface and affordable pricing - it sells for a single, one-time payment of £12.99.
Illustrator Ana Bidault didn’t start out using Procreate, and she says it changed her life when she made the switch. “It’s such an accessible and intuitive app that has everything I need to illustrate, without a ton of unnecessary tools or features,” she says. “You can tell it was made for artists, and since I started using it in 2018, it just keeps getting better.”
Start learning the app yourself with our Procreate tutorials. It’s everything she needs in an art app, as she tells me: “I’ve never felt the need to use other apps, except for very specific things every now and then.”
03. Blender
Learning 3D is a great way to speed up your workflow as a 2D artist, especially if you do a lot of work with complex perspectives. Blender is a cross-platform, free, open-source 3D package that is now a well-supported industry standard and one of the more accessible routes into 3D. Its free nature makes it a nice companion app to Procreate.
Johanna Rupprecht, an artist who works in games, finds Blender to be a great complement to the 2D software she uses for most of her work. “Any scene or set that needs a lot of perspective is much faster to set up in 3D first, particularly for projects that might need a scene from multiple angles,” she says. “Often I can also hand off my rough 3D mockups to the 3D artists, who can use them to establish proportions when modelling what I concepted.”
Film industry concept artist Antonio Niculae began his journey into 3D by learning SketchUp, followed by a number of the best 3D modeling software, such as AutoCAD, Rhinoceros 3D, Mudbox, 3ds Max, Maya, ZBrush, Lumion… and more.
“Eventually, I grew tired of constantly switching between so many different tools, each with endless updates and new features,” he says. “That’s when I discovered Blender. For me, Blender was a game-changer: it brought painting, sculpting, rendering, and more into one platform. Having everything in a single software saves me enormous amounts of time and keeps my workflow streamlined.
“It’s the one app that truly transformed how I work."
Read more in our Blender explainer, and start learning this versatile 3D software with our Blender tutorials.
Download Blender here for free
04. Tyme
For freelancers who need to track their billable hours, software that’s built for this purpose does a much better job than your spreadsheet or notepad.
Johanna likes Tyme for MacOS. “I find it very important to have a solid time tracking software to neatly keep track of hours spent working on different projects and tasks,” she says. “I love that Tyme has the ability to automatically pause the timer when I go take a break; it helps keep time tables very accurate.”
Tyme syncs with iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, and has lots of handy data visualisation features to help you keep on top of things.
Buy Tyme app
05. Unreal Engine 5
You might wonder what a 2D artist might want with a game engine like Unreal Engine 5, but it’s easier to use than ever and growing numbers of artists are dipping their toes in and finding it a great help with complex scenes.
One such creator is art director, illustrator and concept artist Vita Shapovalenko. “For my latest illustration, I built a pipeline creating the base scene and composition in the engine, where I created environments and characters with materials and lighting,” she explains. “Quality, physically accurate lighting became key for me when choosing a scene building tool - the better the render and lighting, the easier all the subsequent stages become.
“Another significant advantage is UE5's optimisation for more complex and heavy scenes. This lets me feel more freedom working even with dense, detailed scenes with lots of objects, light sources, textures, and more. It's genuinely a powerful and impressive tool that I'll definitely continue exploring.”
Unreal Engine is free for most individuals and it's regularly updated with new tools and features. Read our Unreal Engine tutorials for more ideas of what you can do with it.
06. Infinite Painter
If you’re missing out on Procreate because you don’t have an iPad, Infinite Painter is a good alternative and is one of the best drawing apps for Android. It’s a graphics app for painting and drawing that Vita says has “truly won my heart”.
“I often sketch and create portraits in it with a style reminiscent of traditional painting and drawing,” she says. “It's fairly straightforward with a great brush set and nothing unnecessary. A brilliant bonus is the time-lapse that automatically records your process, which helps me easily and quickly share my process on social media.
“Overall, I love both hand drawing and creating 3D scenes equally. My pipeline weaves these two processes together, and one helps the other.”
Like Procreate, Infinite Painter is sold as a one-time purchase.
07. PureRef
Director and storyboard artist Kelsey Norden discovered PureRef when a friend she was working with on a short film recommended it to her. “It’s a great desktop app for getting all of your reference images in one place, floating over your workspace, without having to copy-paste them all into your drawing program,” she tells us. “It made organisation a lot easier.”
You can drag and drop reference images from anywhere, including websites, onto the PureRef window and ask it to arrange them for you. Or you can lay them out however works best for you. It works on Windows, Mac and Linux.
08. Photoshop
Not every digital artist started out working with pixels, and making the switch from traditional art materials to stylus and screen relies on finding the right art program for you. For comic artist Oz Ezeogu, that program was Photoshop.
“When I first moved away from pencil and paper, I struggled to find a program that felt natural and intuitive,” he tells us. “Photoshop was the first digital tool that finally bridged that gap for me. What made the difference was how organic the brush engine felt once I started experimenting with it. Tweaking custom brushes allowed me to recreate textures I relied on traditionally, such as soft graphite, dry brushes and subtle grain, while still giving me all the flexibility of digital editing.
“It turned the transition from something intimidating into something exciting. Instead of trying to imitate my old process, Photoshop helped me evolve it. I started using Photoshop seriously right at the moment when I felt stuck between the familiarity of traditional tools and the possibilities of digital.
“Once I became comfortable with it, the program became the centre of my creative process, whether I'm sketching, painting, or polishing final details. It gave me the control and confidence I needed to fully embrace digital art, and it’s still the tool I return to for almost every project.”
Get started in this deep art and design software with our collection of Photoshop tutorials.
09. Clip Studio Paint
Manga illustrator Chihiro Howe also started as a traditional artist, but Photoshop wasn’t right for her. “I was never able to learn to use Photoshop well enough to draw with, but once I tried Clip Studio Paint it was like an epiphany; I could draw with it as well as I could traditionally,” she tells us. “It was also a very useful software for comic and manga-making, it made things SO much easier.”
Chihiro has a list of things that make Clip Studio Paint ideal for comic and manga creators: “Digital screen tones that you can apply instantly and mess-free; assets made for artists by artists that can be used commercially (they help make the workflow more efficient, since I don't have to keep drawing the little things myself, allowing me to focus more on the storytelling); and pre-installed manuscript settings of various sizes for various uses that you can customise.”
The biggest game changer for Chihiro when she first started using it was the group work functionality that enables her to work efficiently with the team of assistants that she uses to finish her manga episodes. It comes with the Clip Studio Paint EX version, and enables multiple people to work on the same file at the same time.
“The group work feature lets you share the manuscript file with your team on their own cloud without having to upload/download the file using third-party programs,” says Chihiro. “It has a feature that prevents people from accidentally saving over someone else's work.”
Like Infinite Painter, there’s also time-lapse recording, which Chihiro finds helpful for social media purposes. Read more about this app in our Clip Studio Paint tutorials.
10. Notion
For work organisation and blog or tutorial writing, Vita likes the Notion workspace. “It's an app where I love writing notes, making schedules, and jotting down new creative ideas,” she explains. “Notion is fairly simple and convenient to use, plus it syncs across all devices, enabling me to start writing text on my phone and finish on my computer. I use it when I need to write an article or tutorial for my ArtStation blog.”
You can bring text, images and data together in Notion and organise them in very customisable ways. There are also lots of AI-powered features for summarising text, if you find those useful. It’s free for personal use.
Get Notion
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