Alexis Kestler
The iPad has become an incredibly popular tool for artists and designers thanks to its powerful hardware, touchscreen interface, and Apple Pencil support. With the right apps, the iPad can be transformed into a virtual art studio, allowing you to sketch, paint, illustrate and animate your ideas with ease.
In this article, we‘ll highlight the 15 best drawing apps for iPad that are perfect for both amateur and professional artists. From advanced vector design tools to simple sketching apps, there‘s something here for every creative need and skill level.
1. Procreate
Procreate is consistently ranked as one of the best drawing and painting apps for iPad. It offers a highly realistic and natural art experience thanks to its excellent Apple Pencil integration and huge range of customizable brushes.
With over 250 handmade brushes, including pencils, inks, charcoals, oils and more, you can emulate a wide variety of traditional art styles and textures. The brushes are ultra-responsive and packed with features like color dynamics, transparency, wet edges and dual texture.
Procreate provides layer support for constructing complex compositions. You can import images, transform layers, create masks and adjustment layers, and work with clipping groups. There‘s also an animation assist tool for creating frame-by-frame animations.
While immensely powerful, Procreate maintains an intuitive and streamlined interface. Most tools and options are just a tap or swipe away, allowing you to stay focused on the artwork. Procreate is a versatile app suited for sketching, comics, concept art, UI design and more.
Key Features:
- Realistic drawing & painting
- 250+ customizable brushes
- Animation assist
- Intuitive interface
- Layer support
- PSD import/export
Cost: $9.99 one-time purchase
2. Adobe Fresco
Adobe Fresco provides a unique live brushes system that emulates the behavior and texture of real artistic media. The live oil and watercolor brushes interact with the virtual paper in impressively natural ways, blooming, blending and flowing just like the real thing.
In addition to the live brushes, Fresco offers a full set of versatile digital brushes for drawing, inking and painting. These include fan brushes, airbrushes, flat brushes and more. Brush settings like size, opacity, and pressure sensitivity can be customized.
Fresco features Photoshop-quality selection and masking tools for isolating objects and applying adjustments non-destructively. There‘s also robust layer support for building up complex art in passes.
Adobe‘s cloud document syncing makes it easy to start a project on one device and pick back up on another. For iPad drawing, Fresco really sets itself apart with the magic of its live brushes.
Key Features:
- Live oil & watercolor brushes
- Realistic bristle brushes
- Precise selection tools
- Cloud syncing
- Layer support
Cost: Free, $9.99/month for full version
3. Clip Studio Paint
Clip Studio Paint is one of the most full-featured drawing and painting apps currently available on iPad. It provides an absolutely massive library of customizable brushes, 3D models for reference, vector tools, and other assets to accelerate your workflow.
The brush engine supports advanced textures like thickness variation, brush stippling, blending mode mixing, and stroke jitter. There are specialized brushes for inking, watercolor, airbrushing, patterns, fur, screentones and more.
For comics creation, Clip Studio includes speedlines, speech balloons, panel tools and other comic-specific features. There are also animation tools like onion skinning and an auto action-recording tool.
Files are compatible with Clip‘s desktop software for convenient cross-platform editing. For artists who want a flexible app with every possible brush, texture and tool, Clip Studio Paint is a top choice.
Key Features:
- 10,000+ customizable brushes
- Animation & comic creation tools
- Vector drawing
- 3D models & reference images
- File compatibility with desktop
Cost: Free, $4.49-$8.99/month subscription
4. Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator on the iPad allows you to work with the same full-featured vector design tools found in the desktop app. You can create clean scalable art, logos, icons, typography designs and more.
The Touch Shortcuts feature provides optimized gestures and taps tailored specifically for iPaddrawing. Tasks like selecting, resizing, and transforming objects feel fluid and natural.
Illustrator translates your Apple Pencil strokes into smooth editable paths. You can tweak paths with precision using bezier curve editing tools and adjust color, fills, and strokes. The app includes all of Illustrator‘s advanced drawing and shaping tools like the pencil, curvature, and blob brusher.
Files are synced through Adobe‘s cloud so you can switch devices seamlessly. Illustrator is the leading app for professional-grade vector illustration on the iPad.
Key Features:
- Vector drawing & design
- Bezier curve editing
- Touch Shortcuts for iPad
- Cloud documents
- Full Illustrator feature-set
Cost: Free, full version through Adobe Creative Cloud subscription
5. Affinity Designer
Affinity Designer provides a smooth vector and raster design workflow in a streamlined and intuitive interface. It‘s geared towards professional illustrators, concept artists, UI designers and graphic artists.
The Draw Personas feature adapts the workspace to different drawing needs like precision vector design, sketching, inking and tracing. You can switch Personas anytime for optimized tools and settings. Affinity has a real-time interface that instantly displays tool changes.
Vast format support allows you to open and work with Photoshop, PDF, SVG, EPS, Affinity and other file types. Artboards enable you to organize your canvas into scenes or pages.
Advanced vector tools, adjustments layers, filter effects, brush stabilization, and Pencil support make Affinity Designer extremely versatile for both sketching and refined artwork. It delivers professional design capability in an affordable one-time purchase app.
Key Features:
- Real-time interface
- Vector drawing & raster painting
- Artboards with zooming/export
- Broad format support & file export
- Draw Personas workflows
Cost: $19.99 one-time purchase
6. Artstudio Pro
Artstudio Pro is feature-packed for sketching, painting and drawing. It provides a sleek blender brush engine that mimics the real feeling of blending colors and textures. 50 configurable dual texture brushes are included.
There‘s a prominent focus on realistic brush tools. You get oil, chalk, gouache, felt pen, airbrush and other tools that simulate physical media. Artstudio includes a wet paint simulation for blending and mixing colors directly on the canvas.
Your artwork can be organized into layered paintings with customizable canvas presets. Onion skinning and recording features assist with animation projects. Artstudio Pro also supports importing 3D models from your library for reference.
If you‘re looking for realistic natural media brushes that translate superbly with Apple Pencil, Artstudio Pro is an excellent choice.
Key Features:
- Realistic brushes like oils and chalk
- Wet paint simulation
- 50 textured dual-brushes
- Record strokes & onion skinning
- 3D model importing
Cost: $14.99 one-time purchase
7. Graphic
Graphic lives up to its name by focusing primarily on graphic illustration and vector design. You can create with advanced vector tools, customizable brushes, layers, and groups in an infinite artboard space.
The extremely fluid brush engine provides pressure, tilt and velocity sensitivity for natural drawing response. Brushes can be configured with complex textures, grain, jitter, wet edges and other effects.
Graphic is well-suited for icon design, logos, characters illustrations, patterns, diagrams, typography and more. It has handy features like a vector graph tool to visualize and map data.
Files can be exported in PSD, SVG, PNG, JPG and other formats for use across apps and platforms. Graphic presents a versatile environment for both freeform illustration and technical vector design.
Key Features:
- Advanced vector drawing tools
- Natural brush engine
- Vector graph data visualization
- Infinite artboard space
- Group layers & symbols
Cost: $8.99 one-time purchase
8. ArtRage
ArtRage focuses on recreating the look and feel of physical painting and drawing tools. It has realistic markers, paint brushes, pencils, crayons and more. Tools smear, blend and liquify just like real media.
The paint simulation allows colors to bleed into each other. You can feather, stumble and blend strokes on the canvas directly. Glitter, glow and metallic tools provide interesting special effects.
ArtRage includes useful features like reference image import, tracing assistance and grid snapping. The interface also provides handy shortcuts to color pickers, media selectors and other utilities.
While useful for doodling and sketching, ArtRage can produce pro-level artwork thanks to its extremely realistic tools. The natural painting experience makes it a top choice.
Key Features:
- Realistic painting & drawing tools
- Direct paint blending & smearing
- Special effects like glitter & glow
- Useful Assistants and utilities
- Customizable canvases and textures
Cost: $4.99 one-time purchase
9. Linea Sketch
As its name suggests, Linea Sketch focuses on streamlined sketching and drawing. It provides an efficient set of expertly-crafted tools designed specifically around sketching workflows.
You get ultra-responsive vector and raster drawing styles. Smooth curves can be tweaked and adjusted after the fact thanks to the vector-based tools. A range of natural pencil brushes are included.
Linea Sketch is ideal for product sketches, UI/UX diagrams, fashion sketches and urban sketching. Custom gestural shortcuts let you quickly mirror, duplicate and transform strokes as you draw.
Sketches can be exported to various file formats like PNG, JPG, SVG and PDF. Linea also easily syncs and backs up your work in the cloud. The simple toolset and utility-focused interface make Linea Sketch a go-to for on-the-go sketching.
Key Features:
- Vector & raster drawing
- Intuitive sketching tools
- Custom gestural shortcuts
- Cloud syncing
- .PNG, .SVG, .JPG export
Cost: Free, $4.99/month subscription for full version
10. Autodesk Sketchbook
Autodesk Sketchbook provides an expansive toolset that covers sketching, painting, drawing and illustration. It balances simplicity with professional-grade power.
Over 220 customizable brushes are included using Autodesk‘s advanced brush engine. There‘s full support for pressure, tilt and barrel rotation when using Pencil. Brushes behave responsively for a truly natural feel.
Sketchbook can handle immense canvas sizes up to 16K resolution. There‘s an intuitive interface that makes tools easy to access and configure via sliders.
While the tools are versatile for finished illustrations, Sketchbook excels at the brainstorming stage. You can quickly block out ideas and iterate with layers, grouping, and flexible vector curves.
Key Features:
- 220+ customizable brushes
- 16K maximum canvas size
- Simple intuitive interface
- Vector and raster drawing
- Idea development and iterations
Cost: Free, $7.99-$19.99 for Pro subscription
11. Tayasui Sketches
Tayasui Sketches aims to emulate the experience of sketching with paper and pen. The tools are stripped down to focus purely on simple sketching workflows.
You get a range of natural media pencils, pens and markers. Brush tools are very customizable down to granular details like pencil grain and lead brightness. Much attention is paid to delivering realistic drawing.
Simple navigation, rewind, auto-save and minimal interface keep you focused on the sketch. Flexible layer adjustments and transformations allow you to modify strokes after they‘re laid down.
Tayasui is great for quick fashion sketches, product concepts, architecture drawings and other industries where fast ideation is crucial. The simplicity matches the utility needs of real-world sketching.
Key Features:
- Realistic sketching experience
- Fully-customizable brushes
- Intuitive gesture navigation
- Rewind strokes & auto-save
- Made for quick ideation
Cost: Free, $8.99 one-time purchase
12. Artexe Sketch Club
Sketch Club provides a welcoming community of artists sharing tips, tutorials and drawing prompts within the app. It balances social features with great tools for sketching, drawing and painting.
The brush engine is highly configurable with support for edge bleeds, textures, blending, smudging, erasers and more. Brushes can be organized in custom palettes.
Social features allow you to create public and private sketch groups. You can chat, critique sketches, watch speed videos and go live. A daily sketch prompt provides inspiration.
Sketch Club has a simple interface that makes it inviting to new users. But with over 50 customizable brushes, it can handle detailed illustrations. The community focus helps spark ideas.
Key Features:
- Social features & sketch groups
- Daily prompts & video lessons
- 50+ customizable brushes
- Real-time chat & live streaming
- Simple intuitive interface
Cost: Free
13. Paper by WeTransfer
Paper‘s standout feature is its clever simulation of physical sketchbooks. You can flip through sketchbook pages, customize covers, and feel paper textures.
Pages are infinite horizontally for continuous natural sketching flow. Paper offers helpful drawing guides like straight edges and centers without cluttering the page.
A range of natural-feeling marker, pen, pencil and brush tools are included. Plus handy clip art, lines, arrows and basic shapes. Paper keeps things simple and tactile.
Sketches can be organized into virtual bookshelf journals. And you can export animations of your drawing process to share. The scrapbook aesthetic will feel familiar and inviting to new users.
Key Features:
- Unique virtual sketchbook
- Tactile paper textures
- Simple sketching tools
- Export process videos
- Draw guides and basic shapes
Cost: Free, $7.99/month subscription
14. Adobe Photoshop Sketch
Adobe Photoshop Sketch provides a great blend of natural sketching tools and advanced features like layers and filters. You can start simple and develop an idea into a complex, multi-layered illustration.
It offers 19 customizable brushes with a range of options like textures, blending modes, flow control and more. Brushes interact realistically based on stroke pressure, tilt angle and orientation.
Handy utilities like perspective grids, rulers and stencils help construct accurate scenes and objects. Sketch also simplifies tasks like selecting and transforming.
Artwork can be imported to Photoshop on desktop for advanced refinements. Photoshop Sketch strikes an ideal balance between simplicity and utility.
Key Features:
- 19 customizable brushes
- Realistic brush interactions
- Perspective grids & rulers
- Smart utility features
- Layers & filters
- Photoshop integration
Cost: Free
15. ibis Paint
ibis Paint is one of the most popular free sketching and drawing apps with over 200 million downloads. It provides a wealth of professional tools for free.
You can access over 1000 customizable brushes ranging from pencils and markers to unique effects like flames or grass brushes. Advanced features like ruler tools, screentones, correction fluid and more are included.
ibis Paint has a helpful stroke stabilization mode to smooth out lines and shapes. There‘s also a predictive drawing assistant that helps guide stroke paths.
User-created brush packages and other assets are available to import from the ibis sharing community. ibis Paint is incredibly full-featured for a free app.
Key Features:
- 1000+ customizable brushes
- Advanced tools like rulers
- Stabilizer for smoothing strokes
- Predictive drawing assistant
- Import user brushes & assets
- Completely free
Cost: Free
Key Factors for Choosing an iPad Drawing App
With so many options, it can be tough deciding what iPad drawing app is right for your needs. Here are some key factors to consider:
-
Drawing style: Do you want to emulate traditional media or have purely digital tools? Apps like Procreate offer very realistic brushes while others like Affinity focus on customizable digital brushes.
-
Vector vs. raster: Vector apps like Illustrator are best for clean scalable lines and curves. Raster apps like Sketchbook excel at natural painting textures. Some apps offer both vector and raster tools.
-
Features needed: Figure out must-have features like layers, symmetry tools, rulers, or brushes. But avoid overpacked apps if simplicity is paramount.
-
Learning curve: Look at the app‘s user experience and toolsets. Simple apps have a softer learning curve for beginners.
-
Price: Paid apps can cost between $5-$10 for a one-time purchase. Some free apps have subscription upgrades or in-app purchases.
Think about your own creative goals, habits and preferences. Read reviews and user feedback. Download trial versions when available. The right app can become an extension of your unique artistic process.
With the sheer amount of quality drawing apps available today, the iPad has cemented itself as an essential creative tool for professional and aspiring artists alike. These apps remove technical barriers and make it easier than ever to draw, illustrate and animate your ideas digitally.
