I recently fell in love with ArtRage again and decided that I needed to give it a shout out since I only ever mentioned it in passing. ArtRage is a ground up painting program. But by saying 'painting program', I don't want you confuse it with MS Paint, Paint.net, Photoshop or, really, anything else. Unlike everything else I have seen, ArtRage strives for realism in application: brushes have a finite amount of paint on them, painting one color over another will bleed the colors, and understands pressure (assuming you have a device that does) and acts accordingly.
Now I know what you are thinking, I don't paint. And you are right, I don't. I am terrible at painting, and I hate the idea of using tons of time and resources to develop the skill. This program lets me play, I don't have to clean anything up afterwards, there are no resources (though I am going to by the full version for $25), and it helps me to justify buying my Wacom Graphire 2 all those years ago. But to be fair, I am barely even using the painting aspect of the program. It also has markers, crayons, and pencils. The pencils are pretty much where all my time is spent as my art has nearly always gravitated around them. I have been doing a lot of little sketches and brainstorming recently, and this program plus my Wacom work together beautifully.
