Digital painting is gaining momentum both in popularity and in terms of the capabilities of technical devices that allow its realization. Among the programs for painting on the computer there are both giants that require regular investments for continued use, and small indie programs, the quality of which leaves much to be desired.
From one such indie project grew the raster, vector program MyPaint, which has become a favorite of millions of users and continues to serve as a working tool for many professionals, amateurs and beginners in the field of digital drawing.
MyPaint is a raster digital painting program that has an extremely simple minimalistic interface, unlimited canvas and provides basic digital editor functions. The program is written in open source code, which allows users to modify its features freely, customizing tools and functions to “fit their needs”.
The history of MyPaint began in 2004, when its developer, Martin Renold, purchased a Wacom graphics tablet for himself and faced the fact that existing graphic editors either did not meet his creative needs or did not work properly with an external device – they did not recognize the force of pressing the stylus on the tablet.
Martin started developing his own software, which he initially planned to use exclusively for his own work, but then decided to share with users. After receiving a lot of positive feedback from the audience, as well as advice and requests to introduce new features into the program, Martin continued to support his product, creating one of the most famous and sought-after free graphic editors today.
Who it can be useful for
MyPaint is successfully used by both amateurs and professionals in the digital painting industry. Its fast and responsive interface allows you to create sketches of any size, draw storylines for comics, storyboards for video projects, sketches for design, etc.
Due to the ease of the interface and low RAM consumption MyPaint is highly appreciated by artists who conduct online broadcasts with real-time drawing. It allows them to successfully demonstrate the process to viewers, even without powerful technical equipment of a computer.
Main features
The main feature of MyPaint is to recreate the experience of digital painting, as close as possible in its functionality to traditional painting. The program lacks such familiar functions as selecting a section of the drawing, scaling, rotation, filters and color correction. The artist has to work exclusively with artistic means, correcting the mistakes and errors manually.
Nevertheless, the usual conveniences of graphic editors are partially represented here as well. For example, MyPaint supports hotkeys and their combination for manipulating the canvas and tools. The program also has a system of layers and transparency settings, the ability to duplicate and copy an image from one layer to another.
The main advantage of the program many MyPaint users consider a great variety of artistic tools – palette, brushes, markers, rulers and pencils have realistic texture, mix with each other and create an impressive result when using different materials together.