Learn to Draw Cartoon

Review by eFreeware

Most drawing apps hand you an empty canvas and wish you luck. If you have ever stared at one of those and closed it again, the gap is not talent so much as instruction: you need someone to break a picture into strokes you can copy, one after another, until something recognizable appears. That is the gap Learn to Draw Cartoon is built to fill.

It comes from Creative APPS and sits in the Comics category on Google Play. The idea is straightforward: pick a cartoon or comic picture, follow the drawing steps, then color what you have made. The developer's pitch is that no experience or existing skill is needed, and the app has been installed more than five million times, with a 4.2 average across 16,060 ratings. It was released in February 2017 and last updated in November 2025, so it is not a project that was abandoned after launch.

There is no charge to download it, though the app carries ads and offers in-app purchases. I'll come back to what that means for day-to-day use further down.

Glow brushes, and why they change the feel of a drawing app

The feature the developer leads with is the glow brush. Rather than the flat, matte line most drawing tools produce, these brushes lay down strokes with a luminous quality, which suits cartoon and comic artwork unusually well: outlines read as if they are lit, and colored areas can be built up with a shine to them. It is a stylistic choice rather than a technical one, and it gives everything made in the app a consistent look.

What appeals to me about leading with a brush type is that it lowers the intimidation factor. A beginner working with an unfamiliar tool has two problems at once: what to draw and how to control the line. If the brush itself produces an attractive stroke, the second problem shrinks, and the first one is handled by the step-by-step lessons. The two features support each other rather than sitting side by side as separate selling points.

The developer also describes the picture collection as exquisite, which is the sort of claim every drawing app makes about its own catalog. What matters more practically is the range of subjects: the app is pitched at cartoon and comic imagery broadly, so the library is likely to cover a spread of characters and scenes rather than one narrow theme. Whether the specific pictures match your taste is something only you can judge from the screenshots.

Steps, colors and a gallery to keep the results

Around the glow brushes sit three supporting pieces. First, the drawing steps themselves: the app teaches by breaking a picture down and having you work through it in order, which is the same approach as a printed learn-to-draw book, moved onto a screen where you draw directly. Second, coloring. Once the line work is done, you fill it in, and the developer emphasizes choosing your own colors rather than matching a reference exactly. That is a small thing, but it is the difference between copying a picture and finishing one.

Third, there is a gallery that holds your work. The developer frames this as showing your drawing as an artist, which is marketing language for what is essentially a personal collection of finished pieces. Even so, a gallery matters more than it sounds: a visible stack of completed pictures is what keeps a beginner going through the awkward early attempts.

There is also a share option, so a finished drawing can be sent to friends. That rounds out the loop the app is aiming for: learn a picture, color it, keep it, show it. Each piece of that loop is described plainly, and none of it depends on the others working in a particular order.

What the app asks of you

The download is free. The app does contain advertising, and it does offer in-app purchases, so the free experience is not an entirely clean one. I'd rather set that out plainly than bury it, because it shapes how the app feels over a long stretch of use.

The other requirement is your own willingness to follow instructions. The developer promises that no experience or skill is needed, and the step-by-step format is what makes that plausible, but it does assume you will work through the steps rather than freehand. If you would rather improvise from the start, the guided structure is the whole point of the app and there is not much left without it.

You will also need a device you can comfortably draw on. The app is rated for Everyone, so there is nothing in the content rating that would keep a younger artist away.

One more thing worth knowing before you start: the app was updated in late November 2025 with performance improvements and fixes for issues raised by users. That tells you the developer is still tending it, which matters for an app first released back in 2017.

How to get the most from the lessons

The most useful habit with a guided drawing app is to finish a picture before judging your ability. Early steps in any step-by-step lesson look like disconnected shapes, and it is easy to conclude you are doing it wrong halfway through. Working to the end of a piece before deciding whether it worked gives you a fairer read on both the app and yourself.

Second, use the coloring stage as practice rather than decoration. Choosing your own colors, as the developer encourages, means making decisions about contrast and shading instead of matching a sample. That is where a lot of the learning in a cartoon drawing app actually happens, because you are applying judgment to a drawing you already understand structurally.

Third, lean on the gallery. Keeping finished pieces in one place turns a set of one-off sessions into something you can look back over, and comparing an early drawing with a later one is more motivating than any progress indicator. If you plan to share work with friends, the app supports that directly, which gives the practice a small social payoff at the end.

Finally, treat the glow brushes as the app's signature rather than a neutral tool. If the luminous look is what drew you in, use it deliberately: build outlines first, then layer color, and let the brush do some of the work of making the result look finished. If you want a plain pencil-style line, this is not the app's focus.

A guided starting point for cartoon beginners

Learn to Draw Cartoon does one thing with reasonable clarity: it takes a beginner through drawing cartoon and comic pictures step by step, colors them with glow brushes, and keeps the results in a gallery. The combination of a distinctive brush and a structured lesson format is a sensible pairing, and the install numbers and 4.2 average suggest a lot of people have found it usable. The developer's claim that no prior skill is required is credible given the format, though it rests on you actually following the steps.

The trade-offs are the ones you would expect from a free app: advertising is present, and in-app purchases are offered. I'd also note that the app is built around its own picture library rather than open-ended drawing, so its value depends on whether the cartoons on offer appeal to you. It is not a general-purpose art tool, and it doesn't present itself as one.

My recommendation is for people who want instruction rather than a blank canvas: older children, adults returning to drawing after years away, or anyone who finds the empty-page problem discouraging. If you want a specific cartoon, a lesson-based app is a better bet than trying to copy it freehand. Install it, work through a couple of pictures to completion, and see whether the glow-brush style and the library are a fit. That is a fair test of what this app is for.

What's new in version 1.1.1

Dear artists, here are the updated contents: Improve app performance Fixed some user feedback issues This is an app where beginners can become artists. Join us and learn to draw!