Simple Drawing - Sketchbook

Review by eFreeware

If you want to sketch something and there is no paper within reach, this is the sort of app that earns a place on your home screen. Simple Drawing - Sketchbook is a free Android app from Simple Mobile Tool for freehand doodling, and it has been around long enough to gather more than five million installs and a 4.0 average from over fourteen thousand ratings. What appeals to me is the narrowness of the promise: a digital pad for quick drawings, not a studio suite.

That framing matters, because the app is not trying to be a professional illustration tool. The developer describes it as a sketchbook for simple sketches and painting, with the tools you need to get an idea down and the option to share it afterward. If your drawing usually starts with a pen and a scrap of paper, this is the digital equivalent rather than a replacement for a desktop art program.

I would expect it to fit best with people who draw casually: children, beginners, and families who want something to do together. It is rated for Everyone, it is free to install, and it works both offline and online, so a drawing session does not depend on a connection. The trade-offs are the ones that come with a free app of this type, and I will come back to those.

What drawing on it is actually like

The core of the app is freehand drawing on your device screen. You pick a paint or pen size and start moving your finger, which is the whole interaction in its simplest form. There are no advanced tools or filters in the mix, and the developer presents that as a feature rather than a gap: the point is to scribble something quickly instead of learning a complicated interface first.

Beyond the basic stroke, there is an eraser for when a line goes wrong, which is the one correction tool I would want in a sketchbook of this kind. You can also change the background color, or use an image already in your sketchbook as the background and draw over it. That last option is more useful than it sounds: it turns the app into a way to annotate or rework something you made earlier rather than starting from a blank page every time.

Color handling is more flexible than the rest of the app. You can choose paint from a palette, or type in a hex code if you already know the exact shade you want. For anyone who has a brand color or a specific tone in mind, the hex entry removes the guesswork of hunting through swatches. For everyone else, the palette is the faster route.

The overall experience is deliberately shallow, and that is the design. A drawing app with this many installs and this long a life on the store has clearly found an audience that wants exactly this level of complexity, not more.

Saving, exporting and sharing your work

Once a sketch is finished, the app supports several file formats: PNG, JPG, and SVG vectors. The vector option is the interesting one, because it suggests drawings that can be scaled rather than fixed to a pixel grid. For everyday doodles, PNG and JPG will cover most needs, and both are formats you can drop into a message, a document or a photo library without conversion.

Sharing is built in through email or social networks, so a finished drawing can leave the app without you having to export it to another tool first. The app also saves drawings to your Gallery, which keeps them alongside the rest of your photos and makes them easy to find later. For families, that is a practical detail: a child's drawing ends up in the same place as everything else rather than in a folder nobody remembers.

Old artwork can be reopened and painted over with new colors. Combined with the image-as-background option, that gives the app a light editing role alongside its drawing one, without pretending to be a full image editor.

The formats and the sharing options are the parts that make this more than a throwaway doodle pad. They are also the parts that make it easy to hand a finished drawing to someone else, which is often the reason people draw in the first place.

Where the free model shows up

The app is free to install, contains ads, and offers in-app purchases. That is the honest shape of the deal, and it is worth setting expectations accordingly before you start. I would not treat it as an ad-free studio; I would treat it as a free sketchbook that carries some commercial weight along with it.

The other thing to weigh is the scope. This is a freehand drawing app with pen sizes, an eraser, backgrounds, color entry and a handful of export formats. It is not built for layers, complex brushes or the kind of control a digital painter expects from a full illustration program. The developer's own framing is that you do not need fancy or advanced tools here, and that framing is accurate to what the app is.

None of that is a flaw in a sketchbook. A sketchbook is supposed to be fast and forgiving, and the features here support exactly that. If your drawing habit is a few minutes of scribbling rather than a long session of careful rendering, the toolset on offer is proportionate to the job.

The one requirement worth noting is that drawing happens on your device screen with your finger or a stylus, so the experience depends on the hardware you already own. The app itself works offline and online, so a connection is not part of the equation.

Children, beginners and family drawing sessions

The app is aimed at both kids and adults, and children can use drawings to express feelings and ideas. That is a real use case, and the app's simplicity supports it: a child can open it, pick a color, and draw a car, a flower, a dog or a cat without anyone explaining a toolbar first. The Everyone content rating fits that audience.

For beginners, the appeal is the same. There is no learning curve to speak of, because there is very little to learn. You choose a pen size, choose a color, and draw. The eraser handles mistakes, and the background options let you build on something you already made. Someone who has never used a drawing app before can be productive within a minute or two.

Families get a slightly different benefit. The sharing options mean a drawing can be sent to a relative straight from the app, and the Gallery save means the collection builds up on its own. A parent looking for a low-friction activity for a child on a rainy afternoon, or for something to do together, will find the app fits that role without extra setup.

I would also expect it to suit adults who draw casually rather than seriously: people who sketch a diagram to explain something, doodle while thinking, or keep a visual note of an idea. That is a broad group, and the app's design speaks to it directly.

How it compares with a paper pad

The comparison the developer invites is with pen and paper, and it is a fair one. A paper sketchbook is always ready and needs no charging. This app replaces it in the situations where paper is not available, which is most of the time for most people. Your phone is already in your pocket; a sketchbook usually is not.

What you gain is the ability to undo, to change colors without a new pen, to use an image as a background, and to send the result to someone in a couple of taps. What you give up is the texture and permanence of paper, and the freedom from a screen. For quick sketches and doodles, the trade usually favors the app.

The export formats also matter here. A paper drawing has to be photographed to be shared; a PNG or JPG from this app is already in a shareable form. The SVG option adds a format that paper cannot offer at all, even if most users will never reach for it.

I would not frame this as a replacement for a serious artist's materials. It is a pocket alternative for the moments when an idea arrives and paper does not.

A quick pad for casual drawing

Simple Drawing - Sketchbook is worth installing if you want a free, uncomplicated place to draw on your phone. It covers the basics well: freehand drawing with adjustable pen sizes, an eraser, custom backgrounds, palette or hex color selection, and export to PNG, JPG or SVG with sharing built in. It works offline and online, and it saves to your Gallery.

The caveats are the scope. The toolset stops at simple sketching rather than extending into layered illustration. For the audience the app is built for, that is not a problem; for someone who needs a full drawing environment, it would be.

My recommendation is straightforward. If you are a beginner, a parent, or an adult who doodles casually and wants something that opens fast and gets out of the way, this is a sensible free option with a long track record behind it. If you need precise, layered artwork, the app's own focus tells you what to expect.