I like to sketch my dreams. A picture can indeed say more than a thousand words, and sometimes looking at a sketch can instantly bring back the memory of the dream. This can be very handy if I don't wave the time to write it out in detail in the morning. Some dreams feel like long stories, or they have interesting world-building ideas. I want to save those memories, and sketching works well. Free, online software has been the way to go, especially the ones that work in the web browser independently of OS.
The first software I used was something called ArtPad. The site has shut down, and every sketch that was saved on the site went down with it. I did download a few images so that they could be posted to forums, only a handful survive now.
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| This was what ArtPad looked like. This dream gave me inspiration for a real life floral arrangement. |
After ArtPad went down, I started using DeviantArt's built in sketcher "muro". It worked well, but both the painting app and the site itself has become increasingly more bloated over time, so I have drifted apart from it. Some of my more memorable dreams have been illustrated in this app, and I have many good memories of the site. If it would ever become more lightweight in use, I would probably start using it regularly again.
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| This is drawn in DeviantArt Muro, and depicts a dream about the afterlife. I have had several dreams about this transitional stage. The surface they walk on is snow. |
Sketch.io seems promising with its multi platform support, but something about it just doesn't sit right with me. I miss the simple and intuitive transparent layering of the two previous platforms.
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| This was drawn very quickly. I can't remember if it was made in sketch.io or on a sketching app on the phone. |
Lately I have had the guilty pleasure of using Microsoft Copilot, a generative AI, for generating quick sketches of dream scenes in the morning. I understand that this isn't sustainable. Sometimes it is spot on, but about half of the prompts I have given it has just not been drawn right. It seems to especially have a problem with getting the number of characters right in scenes. Comic book styles are rendered very well. The image to the right is the most successful one so far. The dialogue was added later by me in Photoscape X.
What else is out there? Am I missing something? I'm not looking for smartphone only apps. I'm looking for simple apps, that work on a Windows computer, where I can draw with a map. It needs to have an easy to use way to adjust opacity, so I can use transparent layers to mix colours like I'm used to.
