Drawing Software for your Child

Oscar Sodani is a founder of Help2Go and owner of Help2Go Networks, an IT consulting firm in the Washington D.C. area. Oscar holds the CISSP certification as well as industry certifications from Microsoft, Cisco and Novell.

If you have a kid like mine, you have a hard time keeping them away from your computer! There's all sorts of fun games to play on various web sites. But one of the most fun things they can do is to draw! The Paint program that comes with Windows is OK, but it's not really meant for kids. We found one that is - and it's free!

Download TuxPaint and you won't be disappointed. TuxPaint is made specifically for children to use. Big bright buttons, cool tools, and lots of fun noises as they create their masterpiece.

The interface is clean and simple. They can paint with different colors and brushes. They can add text and shapes very easily.

TuxPaint comes with a couple of templates to draw in, and lots more are available on the website. The most fun can be had with the "Magic" tool. Your child can add grass, rainbows, sparkles and more by just clicking. In seconds, your child can turn this:

Into this!

Even more fun can be had with the Stamps tool. Just clicking on pre-made stamps will add them to your childs' drawing. You can download lots of additional stamps from the TuxPaint web site. You will start to see some really wacky creations!

My favorite part about TuxPaint is that opening and saving files is done right within the program, without having to worry about filenames. Each painting that you save will appear as a thumbnail. Just select the artwork your child wants to work on and presto - they're back to work drawing all over the place! If you like, you can use the configuration program to set the directory to which TuxPaint saves its files, as well as a host of other options.

Printing is also made simple - just ho the Print button and their creation will be printed to your default printer. Again, all of these options can be set in the configuration program.

Have fun using Tuxpaint! ... err ... I mean - I hope your child has fun using TuxPaint!

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