Black Ink Drawing Software Free Download

When drawn with knowledge, a great carries a certain evocative power that stems from the cleanliness of the finished work. However, that same cleanliness can also leave you vulnerable because high contrast line drawings give you nowhere to hide. Every line communicates knowledge and power or timidity and uncertainty. It’s a fine line between one and the other, no pun intended. Here are some of my techniques for making ink drawing more approachable and less nerve-racking. Grab your – let's get started. Drawing can relieve your fearsThe unforgiving permanence of ink can stress some people out.

But remember, just because you’re making an ink drawing doesn’t mean you have to use ink all the way through. I’m a firm believer that art should be fun and stress-free. So if launching straight into ink is too much pressure, try drawing your image in pencil first, then add ink over it. Either way works, just do what you’re comfortable with to set yourself up for the greatest joy. One final word: CHILL. A cool catArt should be fun.

You can forget this when you worry too much about making mistakes or obsess over every line you draw and forget the joy of making art. Remember the bigger picture. Every journey every making is fraught with mistakes and missteps. That’s okay; it’s normal. Just remember that each line serves a greater whole and leads to your final image. If you make a mistake, chill out and move on – it might not even be noticeable in the end.

Your lines WILL get better with time so enjoy the journey.

Posted: 3 January, 2015Black Ink has become my favorite drawing/painting application and I do recommend it, but you should be aware of some of its limitations before you decide if it's right for you.The first limitation is that it requires a powerful graphics card to operate. Don't expect to run this on your laptop, much less your Surface tablet. The lag will make it unusable and some brushes won't even render. If you're looking for something to take with you so you can paint under a tree by the lake, this isn't the program for you, unless toting a massive rig on a picnic is your thing.The second limitation is that the selection of brushes is very limited and not entirely satisfactory. While the software is certainly able to handle them, it contains no traditional brush/knife/spatula effects, giving you instead a number of flashy, but not very useful 'computery' ones. Bleank's forums include a 'brush exchange' where you can get another 20 or so brushes, but half of those are just experiments from people who are learning how to define brushes and most of the rest are interesting, but exaggerated effects of limited applicability.

You might find about half a dozen actually useful brushes, including an impressive flame brush, a decent graphite pencil, and a nifty comic book hash shadow brush. The forums also contain a few tutorials on how to make your own brushes. How effective these will be depends as much on your own skills and background as on the tutorial itself. Making a custom brush is as much a technical endeavor as it is an artistic one.The third limitation is that there are no geometric tools whatsoever: no lines, circles, arcs, rectangles, spline curves, etc.

Their addition would make the program enormously more useful for certain types of illustrations, especially if they were given parametrizable 'organic' effects (like random variations) in addition to being rendered with the current brush. Given how easy it is to do this (yes, I am a software developer and yes, I have written drafting programs in the past), it's difficult to justify their absence.Also, keep in mind that you will need a drawing tablet and a pressure-sensitive stylus to get any decent results. Mice and track pads just won't cut it. This is true of all paint programs, but not everyone will think about it until they've tried and struggled with an inadequate input tool. I'm using it with a medium-sized Wacom Intuos Pro and it works great.

You might consider upgrading to a stylus with tilt sensors because some brushes are tilt-sensitive and you'll get even better, richer results. Because Black Ink works best on large drawings, I recommend a large writing surface as well, though that's largely a matter of personal taste; I prefer to have room to move my arm rather than just my wrist.But even with these limitations, what it does, it does very well. I am particularly in love with its layering feature.

In addition to letting you stack backgrounds, foregrounds, and various intermediate slides, it's also great for experimenting on one layer without damaging parts that you want to keep. Which brings up the fact that Black Ink's undo feature works very well. This seems like a trivial observation, but I've used programs that make you want to throw the computer out the window either because they undo too much at once or they can't undo enough.So I certainly recommend this program to anyone who wants a pleasant sketching/drawing/painting program, but I also recommend to Bleank to add more conventional brushes (and why not some more unconventional ones, too?) and a small panoply of geometric tools to make this a more complete and satisfying product. Posted: 26 November, 2013Make, download, or use the provided brushes to make amazing speed-sensitive designs.

People with no talent can make interesting paintings in seconds, while those with skill can produce amazing picasso-esq poitraits in minutes. You might want to conisder picking up a small graphics tablet for an input device, also.Or you can be like me and just get high and drunk and doodle, and then when people ask what you do all day, instead of having to respond that you're always sitting on steam, you can proudly say 'I, sir, am an artiste' as you laugh and twirl your mustache. Posted: 29 November, 2013Black Ink is an. Intriguing tool.I got this from a friend as main drawing software, since I can't afford the really shiny stuff like Photoshop and don't like getting out the old bottle of rum.

Though it's really powerful, there are also some annoying drawbacks, mostly regarding the beta stage of the product.First, the biggest and most annoying drawback: Bugs. There are times when you boot it up and try to draw with your tablet, it's completely out of calibration - something that isn't supposed to happen. The computer certainly detects the tip to be where it should be, but the program just paints a few mm to a few cm off to the left (or to the right, depending on its mood on that particular day). Besides that, Black Ink has the nasty habit of crashing from time to time, but as long as you save often that shouldn't be too much of an issue.But, unfortunately, the topic of saving brings me to the most annoying beta-related downside: Corrupt savefiles. It happens, is really frustrating and I hope it gets solved soon.

For now the way around it is simply to keep a lot of backups, but really, this needs fixing.The last drawback isn't all that bad, but just a bit annoying: You can't zoom further than 100%. They're working on this, though, and I'm sure it'll get resolved soon.Now, enough with the negatives! Positives!Let me start this section off with what I am sure is the biggest selling point: The brush editor. You can create or download countless brushes, taking parameters as speed, pressure and direction and using those definitions to change your brush or add something or whatnot. I don't know much about it, but it's still pretty damn cool and, if you're looking for this, it's a selling point.And besides that this is just a really solid tool. It's responsive, there are nice tools to add saturation to colour instead of having to change the hue up constantly to shade, pretty brushes. Fun!All in all, though the beta stage certainly brings its drawbacks, this is a solid tool.

If you're interested so far, buy it! Posted: 31 July, 2015Have only used this for half a dozen digital paintings, but there are two vital things about this program that you should know:1) This is NOT designed to replicate traditional mediums. If you're looking for Corel Paint, you're in the wrong place. In fact, the more abstracted or impressionist you work, the brighter this program shines.

This is because.2) This program IS designed to take advantage of the DIGITAL apsect of digital painting. At its strongest, Black Ink uses algorithems to do what would otherwise be impractical with other drawing programs. To get the most out of this program, you MUST take advantage of that fact, otherwise you'll wind up frustrated.Because of these two things, you must know that this program is not for every digital painting nor every digital painter. But if want to make non-realistic paintings that take advantage of the digital nature of digital painting, this is definietely the program to do it on. Posted: 23 October, 2014TLDR; An exciting platform capable of producing HUGE resolution paintings with highly customizable brushes.

I have never used a painting application and been inspired BY the painting application itself before Black Ink.To get a good impression of this product and its developers visit the Black ink forum:The following is based on my personal experience and user feedback I've read in the discussion boards.Be aware that this software is:- In development. Updates roll out on a regular basis, and u2 (developer) is highly responsive to suggestions and issues. Some tools you might depend on may not be included in the current version. For example, at the time of writing this review there is no smudge tool but it is slated for inclusion.- Highly GPU intensive, but from what I can tell most dedicated gpus work fine. Check for compatibility. If you're not super familiar with computers or other painting applications, know that this is unusual.

GPU vs CPU will mean that just because other painting applications work for you, it is not guaranteed that this one will. It did not work at all on my laptop, but works wonderfully on my desktop. Try the demo. Paint something HUGE.;)- Has node-based programmable brush controllers. Your typical sliders (color, size, opacity, etc.) are still there, but you can go under the hood to customize your brush by tying the behavior of various brush parameters to the input of your choosing. There is a lot of untapped potential here.

If you're the experimental type or mathematically inclined, you have to check this out.- Focuses on non-realistic painting, but CAN do realistic just fine. For either type, visit the brush section of the forum to see what the community has created. Posted: 9 December, 2015Using this program has been interesting.

Here's a pseudo review and half feedback. This is after an hour run. I'm also using Windows 10 and if the developers are interested, I can give them an indepth overview of my system specs.Cons: Checking the documentation in Help would just leave me in a google search and opens internet explorer. Despite the fact Chrome is my default browser setting. I also wish the documentation is offline as I want to turn off the internet when working and in order to focus. The documentation is also incomplete.

Making me unable to fully appreciate the full features of this program as I trial and error throughout the entire time. It's also weird that the program doesn't start with the layer editor by default. And there's an 8 layer limit which threw me off. Since I'm used to making tons of sketches and making new layers instead of creating a new canvas. That made me sad.:( Shortcut keys are non-adjustable. And even looking at the settings stated in the documentary doesn't match up to the keys I'm seeing.

Z = Zoom but it adjusts smoothing. Q is actually the zoom shortcut key. Among other things. I rely heavily on shortcut keys to have a faster workload so that tripped me up. There's also a time that when I go to Eraser (pressing E) and then erase and back to sketch (I am used to the B/N key) it will swap to the color of the canvas (in this case white). I'm unsure what causes this.

I assumed it's because of primary/secondary color but I haven't seen any indication of this anywhere in the window. It also took me a while to find the color picker but once I found it, it makes sense. Speaking of which. The color picker, in all honest I wish was a wheel instead of the square layout because it's easier for me to pick colors to complement the one in the sketch.

This is a con for me while it might not be for others. But in Photoshop or other graphic programs I use, I can either implement it as a plugin or it's there by default. I hope future iterations will also have it. Even if I have to pay an extra fee. Fill tool has fill canvas, alpha and its invert version. I haven't seen any option to manually fill specific parts of the layer only (For example, if I have a lineart where I want the top to be orange and the bottom to be be blue outlines like other art programs). I'm assuming it's not in.Now that I have said all my gripes I will now spaz out as to why this program has so much promise and why I want to recommend it.Pros: The UI feels soooo good to draw in.

It's also so nice to navigate. It is unnatural at first but it's easily fixable. The UI is also dockable and adjustable so I can do whatever workspace I want in it.

All Basic shape options are in. That's good! The default brushes themselves are nice, especially when pen tips are all the types I like as well. I have no complaints.

Especially when used with the Controller Editor. The ability to use gradient as a brush color is a super nice touch as well. The brush blending options (Normal, Multiply, Additive and Subtract) are a nice welcome. Now all I need is Color Dodge and my life is complete haha.

The Controller Editor is unique and fun to use. It's almost like designed for a game engine, Adobe After Effects or Toon Boom's animation options that I'm super familiar with. I still have to create more brushes but so far I am liking it and I think it's easily one of the strengths of the program. The line options. Making background layouts in this program fits my workflow much better.

Shift using a brush is great because it shows a wheel to show what angle you are in and helps me alot to be accurate. My space perception is horrible so this helps me a LOT. It also can be adjusted to detect pressure sensitivity or static.

This is great. The Smoothing. I never liked using these because I am confident of with my strokes, but the way the smoothing actually helps me and doesn't feel intrusive is great. Especially the way it adjusts.

It's like a better version of Flash curved line. The ability to put an image for referencing/tracing over sketches without having to add a new layer is GREAT. Thank you for that:)Do I recommend this? Well it depends.Personally, I don't see this working for any final work. I recommend it for experimental sketching or concepts. It's fun to use, great feel and has enough tools. However, compared to Photoshop especially it's blending layers, it might be lacking.

Especially if you're the type to put in pictures and abuse its blending modes to get an idea for a compositional piece. The lack of documentation is very offputting but if you're used to tinkering other softwares, this isn't going to be hard to understand.But yes, I do recommend it. I can't wait for future updates and a better documentation. I will adjust this review if an update happens. The Full Review:First off, let's talk about the lack of features. Here are some of the common complaints about Black Ink's feature set that I've seen on Steam and elsewhere:. Not enough good brushes out of the box.

Windows Ink Software Free Download

No fill tool. No blending brushes.

Only 8 layers available. No maskingAre these valid? Absolutely, each is completely true. The team is working on some and some are way down the list of needed improvements, so we might never see them.But for me, none of that matters.Why? Because Black Ink is just a joy to use, even in its current, limited state. It feels like the future, like someone 10 years from now is sending back a digital painting package to give us a preview of what things are going to look like in their day.Let's talk about some good and bad things about Black Ink.Here is what I love about Black Ink:. I have never used a drawing package that felt so smooth.

Everything from the brush strokes to the menus sliding in and out to moving the canvas around just feels cool. The brushes that are available are perfect for concepting out designs.

Just enough randomness in them to give you meaningful happy accidents. It's FAST.

10k canvases with 5k brushes are just as smooth as 1k canvases with 20px brushes. I've never had a brush stroke lag, ever. Tweaking the brushes is actually very intuitive once you understand the node based system. It has the best shortcut system of any app I've used. I love that everything used for painting is on the left side of the keyboard, and that you don't have to click the drawing pen down to activate them. Once you are holding the key it is active. This makes the software feel smoother and faster.

Features are well thought out. I am the first to complain about the frequency of updates (and have in the past), I do wish they came more often.

But what I love about the dev team is that when they implement a new feature, they make sure it is awesome before releasing it. Every new feature that has been added is well defined, well thought out and implemented in a way that makes you feel like it always belonged there. The dev team is really responsive.

Look in any thread in the discussions page here on Steam and you'll see responses from them. They are very aware of what is happening and what people want.Ok, so from my description you probably think I have only praise for Black Ink. But there are certainly things that bother me.Things I don't love about Black Ink:.

As I mentioned above, updates are great when they come, but I wish they came more often. Three times a year just isn't enough when you are in early access in my opinion. The color picker sucks. It takes 3 clicks to choose a color, most other programs have the color wheel right there. It's a one click operation to select a color. The lack of color palettes is something sorely missed as well. I do wish there were more brushes that were just normal painting brushes.

While I appreciate and really like the crazy experimental ones, it would be nice to have an airbrush, a textured paint brush, and a few other without having to shoe horn them in myself. A fill tool would be nice (coming in the next release apparently)Even with these flaws Black Ink remains one of my favorite drawing programs. Do yourself a favor and at least get the demo here on Steam. I think you'll find it to be one of your more satisfying painting software experiences. Posted: 26 May, 2017First of all this program runs very smoothly on my machine, although it will crash when trying to do more complex things.I am a professional Graphic Designer and I usually work with Adobe programs and Autodesk. I also feel this program is a decent digital painting program for small-scale imagery. And that is where the problem with this program is.

As a graphic designer when working on a digital imagery that is not vector graphic you utilize very high resolutions. This program cannot handle very high resolutions such as 8K. It works somewhat but will crash when trying to mask shapes at that size. Many of the brushes also do not accommodate such large resolutions, most are just capable of doing 1080. So as a professional this program is not that useful for creating works of art that could be used as assets for the ever increasing demand for higher resolutions. I do however feel that the designers could work to make this program capable of such high resolutions, however I feel this would probably require more powerful computers capable of keeping up with the graphical demand.In conclusion, if you are an enthusiast who doesn't mind the lower resolution and does not want to pay the price of running Adobe this may be a very useful program to have.As a professional I could not recommend this program because of its limitations, it shows you really do get what you pay for.

However it can be fun and makes work fast for small-scale and concept imagery, so it might be useful to have if you don't mind spending the money. Posted: 14 December, 2015Contrary to some of the reviews posted here this is an incredible piece of software for producing more than just abstract or impressionist mediums. Having dabbled with the brush setups this program is capable of producing a level of fine detail that also lends itself to all types of artwork, including something that looks almost photorealistic if required. Amazingly this can be acheived simply changing the settings of one brush throughout.At first I will admit it was a struggle to get to grips with anything other than experimenting with the stock brushes to create weird and wonderful doodles but once you learn how to modify brushes to your liking the sky really is the limit. Compared to the price of art software of a similar quality and scope this program really is a steal.