15 Free Awesome Drawing and Painting Tools for Teachers and Students

Drawing is an important skill in education . Some studies have shown that   painting and drawing can improve complex reasoning,writing, and reading readiness, partly because the critical and creative faculties required to generate and appreciate drawing transfer cognitively to future learning experiences, and partly because drawing and art in general make learning fun : A student personally invested in his or her work will be far more likely to stick with it.

   "The observational skills needed to draw a careful sketch of a leaf, are the same skills you need to figure out scientifically what's going on in a pond, which are the same skills you need to 'read' your classmates," ( Peter Dillon : Principal at New York City `s Heritage School )

To help teachers and educators cultivate this skill and improve students critical thinking processes using drawing  , I have compiled a list of some of the best free drawing tools that can be used very easily and most of the time without even registration or any software download. I have scanned the tools below using the recent web evaluation techniques and therefore attest to their usability. Check them out and hopefuly share them with your colleagues.



1- Sketchfu

This is a great  free web tool that allows users to easily draw and create sketches and share them with others. It requires a sign up.



2- Sketchpad

Sketchpad  is a cool platform that you can use to make awesome drawings using text and a wide range of colours and patterns.



3- Comics

This is another cool website that lets users draw comics and share them with others.



4- Quickmaps

Quickmaps allows users to draw a quick map. It is very easy to use but it requires a sign up which is completely free.



5- Tux Paint

This is a free drawing program for children ages 3 to 12. It has a user friendly interface, and  fun sound effects. It is available for download for Windows XP, 2000, Vista 7.



6- Drawing Game Maker

This is a free drawing program for children with many nice options. It lets users draw with many different pens, and put stamps on their drawings. It is available for download for free.



7- Livebrush

Livebrush is a drawing application. It employs an easy-to-use brush tool that reacts to your gesture. By combining simple motion controls with brush styles, Livebrush offers a fun and unique way to create graphics.



8- FlockDraw

FlockDraw is a free to use online whiteboard based painting and drawing tool. It makes it easy to draw online free with multiple people .



9- DoInk

DoInk is a simple and friendly vector editor that lets users create flash-style animations.



10- Chogger

Chogger is simple platform where you can use different tools to  create awesome drawings. It is free and web based.



11- Colour Lovers

This is a creative community where people from around the world create and share colors, palettes and patterns, discuss the latest trends and explore colorful articles.



12- Psyko Paint

Psykopaint is a website where users learn and enjoy painting using a wide variety of tools such as brushes, pencils, and many more. It is so much fun to use.



13- Kerproof

You have probably already heard about this tool. Kerprof has a section dedicated for users to create and exercise their drawing skill using several tools.




14- Odosketch

Odosketch is another cool tool that lets you create great looking sketches for free. It requires a sign up.



15- Pencil

Pencil is an animation/ drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation ( cartoon ) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source. it requires download.