Quote Originally Posted by Hulan View Post
You would have to ask some of the real artists for a final opinion; but for myself, I have started drawing on a tablet and it is a real quality of life improvement when working digitally. I use Photoshop CS6 and Illustrator CS6. The former I use normally, but the latter has a much nicer crisp look that I like (really it's a crutch for my terrible abilities XD).

For starting out, I would grab Gimp, since it is a good analog to Photoshop and it's free. If you like the way it feels, look into getting Photoshop Elements (cheap) or CS6 (much more expensive). Tablets are pretty pricy too if you're planning on just drawing casually, so you may want to consider just working with mouse and keyboard until you decide to take it to the next level. A nice middle ground is a trackball mouse. It takes a day or so to get used to, but the fidelity is much higher than that of a laser mouse and great for fine motor control.
I would only add SAI Paint Program to that list. It has some incredible brush tools.