Bob Staake, creator of the charming children’s book Donut Chef and dozens of New Yorker cartoons, draws with a mouse using an ancient version of Photoshop. This video speaks volumes about the virtues, and humanity, of computer-generated art, and how fluid the process can be, once you loosen your head up (which this video will do). It instantly had me yearning for an accessible, fun drawing program.After monkeying around with the totally unsatisfying Object Palette in Microsoft Word and some big guns Adobe programs I don’t know how to work, I decided to google “easy drawing software for Mac kids”, thinking I might find something for my non-technical self.  I found a cool free open-source drawing program called Tux Paint that’s totally fun. In addition to basic drawing and paint box commands, it’s got rubber stamps, text, and “magic tools” that can pixilate, fade, sparkle, look like chalk….. Why not use a kids drawing program, if that’s what works?”

tux-paint-screen1

A few weeks later, I stumbled on a free, open-source “adult” drawing program called Draw, part of OpenOffice, a productivity suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation maker, among other things.  Draw looks like it does a million things and is supposed  to be intuitive, but after a while clicking on things and trying to figure it out, I went back to TuxPaint, for FUN.

Related posts:  Donut Chef

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