Tuxpaint
Tuxpaint is a popular free drawing program designed especially for kids. It features quirky sound effects and a simplified interface that is ideal for younger children. All the basics that you’d expect in a drawing package are available, including brushes of various sizes and styles, shape tools, and a collection of ‘magic’ effects that can be applied to a drawing.
The best feature is a great set of stamps that lets kids plonk down fully formed cut-outs (animals, coins, hats, spacemen, food, symbols etc) into their work of art. Here’s one that AJ prepared earlier:
I think that’s Air Force One cruising past a meat pie.
Tuxpaint is available for most operating systems including Windows and OSX, and it’s also well suited to being run on older computers. If you download it, be sure to also download any additional stamp packs that have been made for your operating system’s version.
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Kiddley uses and recommends 
Thanks for writing about this. I just downloaded it. Can’t wait to show my daughter!
Fiona May 24th, 2006 14:38
We love, love, love Tux Paint in our household! We’re running it on Linux, and my 3.5yo son has absolutely no problems using it.
Melanie May 24th, 2006 16:06
My daughter will love this. Thanks
Bokoq May 24th, 2006 20:45
this is awesome!
my kids use the “paint” program
that comes with windows
but they are going to
gobble this up…
yay!
thanks for sharing it
and this site was a fantastic idea!
gkgirl May 24th, 2006 21:51
Nice!! Off to download it now unless it takes too long on dial-up. Lost my broadband connection a while ago and it’s still not fixed. *sob*
My son’s been playing with BBC’s Toybox games collection which has a paintbox with similar functions. Of course, this CD-ROm software isn’t free….
Hsien Lei May 25th, 2006 00:24
just downloaded this, my kids can’t wait to play it. Thankyou.
irishmama May 25th, 2006 00:28
Hey, thanks for the plug!
Bill Kendrick (Tux Paint author) May 25th, 2006 03:53
this is wonderful, thanks so much, again!!
Andrea May 25th, 2006 23:29
I downloaded this straight away and my son (6) is smitten. I love his laughter from the crazy pictures he has created. Thank you for letting me know about this.
caroline May 26th, 2006 20:42
Thank you for the great link – I downloaded it (just in time for half-term!) and my 5 yo loves it. Very intuitive program.
Ali May 28th, 2006 15:29
Wow. Thank you so much. My daughter uses it everyday and she really enjoys figuring out all of the features.
Julie May 28th, 2006 18:16
thank you! i downloaded tux paint this past week & it is great to see the boys (6 and 4) giggling uncontrollably as they stamp the page with toilets (huge and small) with rubber ducks rising out of them. love kiddley BTW– and best of courage & rest for the weeks upcoming!
kelli ann May 29th, 2006 10:08
love this tuxpaint download and having great fun on it, must remember to show it to the kids!!!
hannah May 30th, 2006 10:31
cool thing. might just use it for my daghter.
Bargin Hunter May 31st, 2006 10:42
Some good tips that I recently discovered about Tux Paint – both the Windows and OS X versions come with a second app called tuxpaint-config (.exe or .app depending on the platform.)
This solves a bunch of niggly things that frustrated my 4 year old (and me ). First, you can set the screen size so it covers the WHOLE screen, which is great for little ones still learning mouse control.
There’s also an option to have “no button distinction”, which translates to them being able to click the left or right or centre buttons and still have it do the left click action – again very handy for little ones.
You can also define a different save directory as well as a bunch of other options. *Definitely* worth checking out and exploring the various options.
Finally, by default TuxPaint saves pictures in the:
your_boot_drive_letter:\Documents and Settings\your_user_name\Application Data\TuxPaint\saved
folder under Win XP. (I think it’s similar under Win98). This is handy if you’re scanning various bits of doodles that your children have drawn and want to draw extra stuff using TuxPaint!
Ian Chia June 2nd, 2006 18:00
Ian, that’s great information. Thanks!
Phil June 2nd, 2006 21:23
[...] AJ currently doesn’t get much time in front of the computer. When she does, it’s usually to spend some time using TuxPaint or to play games at Disney Playhouse. [...]
Kiddley » Blog Archive » Online: Disney Playhouse June 8th, 2006 19:02
Just had to drop a bunch of pictures into the OSX box for my daughter. The images are stored in:
~yourusername/Library/Application Support/TuxPaint/saved/
Images must be in PNG format. (I think Quicktime can convert to PNG, but I just batched them all using Fireworks.)
Cheers,
- Ian
Ian Chia June 10th, 2006 13:30