Digital painting

Most free paint programs have very limited options when it comes to creative work, such as painting and manipulation of images. An exception, which I have just come across, is TwistedBrush Digital Painting and Photo Editing. While the main version is a paid-for program, with thousands of brush styles and effects, a free version has 55 filters, 19 paper textures, 14 artsets (with up to 60 brushes per set), and 17 mediums. You can turn a photograph into a hand-made image, or start from scratch. The gallery at the website shows some amazing examples of what you can do with this program. Definitely worth a dabble.