h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Any idea what software would be appropriate for a 6-year old, wishing to draw and paint shapes.

I'm using Windows Vista.

I just downloaded Serif Draw 4 but, although we can draw shapes, we can't change the colour of the outline using the given palette. Neither can we colour in the shape using the paintbrush 'fill' tool. Nothing happens

Neither can I use thew 'Help' button because it won't work in Vista

Tux Paint

http://www.tuxpaint.org/

And there's plenty of other free/open source software available

See: http://osswin.sourceforge.net/

also http://www.winlibre.com/en/

Hope that helps

Tuxpaint was just the job.

Taliesin

for when they get advanced and geeky: GIMP

http://www.gimp.org/

Ahh, Gimp. Responsible for the greatest ever shouted comment in our office.

"Stuart! You're our Gimp expert - give Nats a hand with it, I'm a bit tied up at the moment."

I do love GIMP. It's cantankerous and confusing but it is wonderfully free.

I'm trying to learn how to use it, getting there slowly. So far i know what half of the buttons do.

I find that it's the really basic stuff that leaves me scratching my head and hunting for a button.

I keep messing around with it but i can't do anything complicated yet.

Paint.Net. Probably not for the original questioner, just for all the poor confused GIMP users.

Ooh, looks interesting.

For those who find the GIMP interface somewhat confusing, there's Gimpshop -- http://www.gimpshop.com/

If you'd like a simpler drawing/sketching program, that has built-in animation, take a look at Pencil -- http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil/

If you're into high-end, movie quality 3d, here's the rather daunting Blender -- http://www.blender.org/

I've forgotten everything I knew about Blender. Can't even get a path to work proper!

Think I'll stick to music.

>>Think I'll stick to music<<



I still own my full version of Autodesk 3D-Studio, complete with incredibly thick manual and equally heavy tutorial textbook.

The thing refused to run under windows 3.1, or windows NT, so I had to reboot my trusty 486 into DOS

And then I purchased Character Studio....

I much prefer music these days

There's also inkscape http://www.inkscape.org/ for those who want a free Illustrator alternative... (Vector drawings)

Are those vectors the same ones I learn about in maths?

Exactly. Rather than pixel-by-pixel, it lets you draw vectors, meaning you can rescale as you like without losing clarity.

thanks. better download inkscape as well then so i have a copy if i ever got good with drawing programs.

To get good at making pictures on computers did anyone do course or just mess around till they knew what to do?

I had a few Uni courses in CAD drawing, but learned all the other stuff by doing - and using web tutorials.

Looks like I'll be web hunting for tutorials once I've finished downloading iso images from the net!