10 Best Drawing Apps for MacOS in 2023

Drawing is no longer only a hobby. With the introduction of NFT, drawing has become a simple way to make money online and establish a full-fledged career.

On the top, the graphic-rich MacOS interface allows artists to create digital drawings using Apple Pencil and many powerful drawing applications. Today, if you can draw, just get the best drawing apps for your macOS device and give a kickstart to your new blooming career.

After understanding the requirements of artists, we have shortlisted the best 10 drawing apps for MacOS users to create whimsical digital drawings.

10 Best Drawing Apps for macOS in 2023

Digital drawing is a new trend that allows artists to share their work on social media and sell online. But, to do so, they need a complete drawing app that can help them unleash their creativity. So, after using different drawing apps on our Mac machine, we found these applications best for aspiring digital artists:

1. Photoshop by Adobe

Software Rating: 4.9/5

Compatible MacOS: MacOS 10.15 or higher

Popularity: High

Price: 7-day free trial. The basic price for an individual user is $20.99 per month.

Adobe Photoshop needs no introduction. Since 1988, it has been the number drawing and photo editing tool worldwide. Photoshop has several drawing features available, including masks, color models, alpha composition, and more. The program uses its own file formats – PSD and PSB to support all the ultrasonic drawing features. For creating vector graphics and 3D videos, Adobe Photoshop is the best drawing app for MacOS.

Innocent Features

• Photoshop is packed with several drawing features such as a pen tool, clone stamp, shape options, and many more.
• The eyedropper tool allows artists to select a color tone from any area of the image.
• There is a wide range of basic photo editing options available like cropping, rotating, resizing, slicing, moving, and more.
• The Lasso tool allows users to make a custom selection of art pieces by drawing free handedly.
• You can easily erase your drawing and recreate it with pen tools using the powerful eraser.

Pros

• Easy to use.
• Large community.
• Various tutorials and documents to learn.
• Highly customizable.

Cons

• Significant learning curve.
• Limited free trial.

2. Krita

Software Rating: 4.8/5

Compatible MacOS: MacOS 10.13 or higher

Popularity: High

Price: Free

Krita is the best free drawing app for MacOS, Windows, Linux, Android, and Chrome. It is open-source software under the GPL-3.0 license. You can create stunning digital paintings and 2D animations using this freemium tool. Despite being a free tool, it has several awesome features such as OpenGL accelerated canvas, powerful brush engines, color management, layer management, vector artworks, and more. It is a highly stable app written in C++ using Qt.

Innocent Features

• Krita is a dedicated painting tool with numerous cool features like 9 different brush engines, pen stabilizer, multiple brush settings, and more.
• Krita offers a similar interface to Adobe Flash for free for creating animations.
• Powerful vector tools including path, text, vector art, selection, etc.
• Krita offers multiple level layer groups, layer highlighting, and vector layers.
• It is a fully customizable tool that you can easily design to meet your drawing needs.

Pros

• 100% free tool.
• Highly customizable.
• Plugin compatibility.
• Lightweight.

Cons

• Outdated graphical interface.
• Hard to understand some features.

3. Corel Painter 2022

Software Rating: 4.7/5

Compatible MacOS: MacOS 10.15 or higher

Popularity: High

Price: Full subscription for $429

Painter 2022 is a modern drawing app for MacOS users. The software can create next-gen digital paintings with a variety of features such as brushes, blending, and other tools. Using additional brush packs dry and wet blending, you can turn black into a masterpiece. Corel Painter allows you to add depth, texture, and fluid movements to your art that can visually look like a smooth painting.

Innocent Features

• It is compatible with other drawing apps like Photoshop and Painter.
• You can create illustrations, sketches, animations, and many other digital arts with Corel Painter.
• Allows painters to play with variations of watercolors that will flow, absorb, mix and evaporate like a real thing.
• Multiple canvas controls such as pan, zoom, rotate, and apply lighting.
• Create appealing compositions using Mirror Painting, Layout Grids, and other tools.

Pros

• Neat UI.
• Various brush packs.
• Compatible with Adobe Photoshop.

Cons

• Slow rendering speed.
• Extremely difficult to use.

4. Pencil2D

Software Rating: 4.6/5

Compatible MacOS: MacOS 10.13 or higher

Popularity: High

Price: Free

This is yet another free and open drawing app for MacOS. The software is released under General Public License using the Qt framework. So, you can use Pencil2D on all the popular OS, including Windows, Linux, and Mac. It is a perfect tool to create cartoons using techniques like onion skin, tracing drawings, etc. Besides this, the software can manage vector and bitmap drawings too.

Innocent Features

• It is compatible with multiple file formats such as JPEG, PNG, AVI, GIF, APNG, etc.
• Numerous strokes and instruments are available to support digital artists.
• You will get a paper-like drawing experience with beautiful brushes and strokes.
• Compatible with Adobe Photoshop for easy file transfer.

Pros

• Intuitive UI.
• Good for beginners.
• Excellent layering.

Cons

• Limited features.

5. Inkscape

Software Rating: 4.6/5

Compatible MacOS: MacOS 10.11 or higher

Popularity: Moderate

Price: Free

Inkscape is a free yet feature-rich drawing app for MacOS, Linux, and Windows. It is a perfect tool to create vector images in Scalable Vector Graphics file format. It also imports and exports to other file formats. Inkscape is released under the GPL-3.0 or later license. The software can render primitive vector shapes like polygons, ellipses, rectangles, etc. You can fill these objects with solid patterns, color gradients, and so on.

Innocent Features

• It can render objects to create barcodes, grids, curves, stars, polygons, etc.
• Every object can be easily moved around, such as rotate, scale, skew, configure matrix, and more.
• The Create Tiles Clones feature can help to create symmetrical and grid-style drawings.
• You can further change the appearance of objects using masks and clipping paths.
• Users can also manually change the location of objects from the top toolbar.

Pros

• Good for creating vector graphics design tools.
• Simple UI
• Extendable functionality.

Cons

• Sluggish process.
• Too many features.

6. Sketchbook

Software Rating: 4.5/5

Compatible MacOS: MacOS 10.13 or higher

Popularity: Moderate

Price: Free

Sketchbook is a blank page for sketching, drawing, or painting. It has an intuitive and streamlined interface that can help you draw the way you want to do. It got all the essential features to draw a masterpiece, including layers, blend modes, and many more. Besides this, hundreds of brushes are available to help you draw, like pencils, markers, smears, and more.

Innocent Features

• You can use a variety of techniques to color your sketch, including radial gradients and dynamic linear.
• Sketchbook has traditional rules, French curves, and eclipse tools for creating smooth lines.
• It can use dynamic symmetry tools to create horizontal, vertical, and radial symmetries.
• It has a natural pen feel to make smooth strokes and tilts.

Pros

• Intuitive interface.
• Great compatibility with Mac and iOS.
• A vast collection of drawing tools.

Cons

• You need an Autodesk subscription to use this tool.

7. Sketchpad

Software Rating: 4.5/5

Compatible MacOS: All MacOS versions

Popularity: Moderate

Price: Free

Sketchpad is a web-based drawing app that you can use on multiple operating systems, including Mac. It is a modern computer-aided design program that can help you create basic computer graphics too. This program has shown that computer graphics can be useful for artistic and technical purposes. Overall, it is a great drawing app for MacOS that will not take up space on your hard disk.

Innocent Features

• Geometric constraints help artists to easily draw geometric properties.
• Offers customizable graphics, lines, pencils, and many other tools.

Pros

• Simple online interface.
• Good to create basic drawings.
• Useful for novice users.

Cons

• Not many drawing features.
• Cannot create intricate drawings.

8. SketchUp

Software Rating: 4.4/5

Compatible MacOS: MacOS 10.11 or higher

Popularity: Moderate

Price: Starts at $119 per year

SketchUp is a stunning drawing app for MacOS to render 3D models. It offers a wide range of drawing and design applications. SketchUp can be used for multipurpose drawings such as interior design, architectural, product design, mechanical engineering, and more. In addition, the software can render surfaces in different styles and allows place models within Google Earth.

Innocent Features

• It allows you to experience seamless transit between AutoCAD to improve 3D rendering quality.
• Many prepared 3D models are available to use in any way.
• It can create 3D prototypes to show your customers the basic floor plan.
• Various training videos are available to learn the features of SketchUp.

Pros

• Sleek online interface. 
• Good for beginners.
• Dedicated drawing toolkit.

Cons

• Not suitable for complex drawings.

9. Pinta

Software Rating: 4.3/5

Compatible MacOS: All MacOS versions

Popularity: Low

Price: Free

If you like to use the Windows dedicated Paint.NET drawing app on your Mac device, Pinta is the best alternative. It is a simple and straightforward drawing app to create basic drawing elements. Pinta is open source software, so you can use it on all devices, including Linux, Mono/GNOME, MacOS, and Windows. Pinta is a bitmap image editor with typical image editing features such as image filters, color adjustments, etc.

Innocent Features

• Offers simple drawing tools to draw lines, ellipses, rectangles, and other shapes free handedly.
• Pinta has more than 35 adjustments and effects for tweaking with your drawings.
• The program can store your entire drawing history to undo your actions at any time.
• Multiple layers are available to separate and regroup elements on your images.
• Pinta supports over 55 languages to personalize the drawing experience.

Pros

• Extendable functionality.
• Multilingual support.
• Highly customizable.

Cons

• Hard to use.
• Bulky software.

10. GrafX2

Software Rating: 4.2/5

Compatible MacOS: All MacOS

Popularity: Low

Price: Free

GrafX2 is a free and open-source bitmap graphics editor. This program is inspired by the popular Amiga programs Deluxe Paint and Brilliance. It is released under the GPL-2.0-or-later license. Thus, it can be used on multiple operating systems such as AmigaOS, FreeBSD, Windows, MS-DOS, MorphOS, and more. The software has been available since 1996, so it has gone through multiple updates and developments.

Innocent Features

• The special color palette features such as color cycling, palette swap, transparent color for sprites, and more.
• The interface is mouse-driven with extensive keyboard shortcuts for smooth usage.
• You can split editing areas: normal size on the left and zoomed-in view on the right.
• A brush has a built-in monochrome shape or colorful bitmap.
• There are multiple drawing features such as image editing, shading mode, dual-view styles, and more.

Pros

• Compatible with different file formats.
• It is a free and open-source platform.

Cons

• Outdated look.
• Limited features.

Let’s Draw Now!

Don’t let your talent sit ideally if you know how to draw. Get the best drawing app and create digital drawings to share online with the world. Your digital creations can help you establish a full-fledged career.

So, now you already know the best and free drawing apps for MacOS. Simply select a suitable tool and start drawing today.

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