Grease Pencil is a free hand drawing tool that lets you draw on desktop screen of your PC using a brush whose width can be adjusted according to your requirement. This can help children learn writing alphabets or numbers in a fun and entertaining way. Even you can use this tool for presentation purposes. You can highlight objects appearing on your desktop screen with the help of this tool and demonstrate things easily. Moreover, whatever you draw on screen, can be moved forward or backward to any application that is currently opened on your PC.
The brush is available in 11 different colors with customized width. It also supports working with hotkeys; this helps in quickly performing tasks like changing the brush width using middle mouse button, Ctrl+E to choose eraser, Ctrl+C to clear entire screen etc. But one shortcoming of this tool is that there is no undo/redo hotkeys or options available. So if you draw anything by mistake, you can only use eraser to erase that from screen.
As visible in the screenshot below, you can draw on any open application or on your desktop screen using Grease Pencil.
Once you launch Grease Pencil, it will sit silently in system tray and can be accessed from there. Just right-click on its system tray icon and it will provide you all the options. For example using Options, you can select the brush color and type of brush according to your need.
Likewise using Shortcuts, you can view all the available shortcuts of Grease Pencil. And if you want your drawing (that you draw on desktop) to appear on top of the open application, then use ‘To Front’ option or use hotkey “Ctrl+Up Arrow key”. To move it to the back, use ‘To Back’ option or available hotkey.
Key Features present in Grease Pencil are as follows:
- A simple free hand drawing tool that allows you to draw on desktop or on any open application, even on a web browser.
- You can use different brush color and type.
- Hotkeys are available to use it more easily and quickly. See the below screenshot:
- Multi platform tool that is available free for Windows and Mac OSX.
Download and Installation Process:
Grease Pencil is a lightweight tool and is only 994 kb in size. Grease Pencil requires Adobe Air to be installed on your PC to install and run it successfully. You can find the download link for Grease Pencil at the end of this article. After downloading it, you can follow the basic installation steps and install this free drawing tool in your system within few seconds. After completing the installation, it will start running in system tray, or you can open it later using desktop shortcut.
Similar software: ZoomIt and Epic Pen.
Conclusion:
Grease Pencil is a nice tool that you can use for educational purpose, to make your kids learn writing characters, or just for fun. But you might feel disappointed as undo and redo options are not present in it. You have to use eraser to remove mistakes. Use the link given below to get it and try it yourself.
Also check out these free drawing software: SmoothDraw, Saint Paint Studio and Alchemy.
