Free artprogram with painterly style brushes and animation included!, though i havent tried the animation yet.
The programs homepage is here - http://www.squirreldome.com/cyberop.htm
Version 1.2 is the free one and save files as BMP's plus there are trial versions of build 2 and the pro version coming soon
im currently messing about with 1.2 myself and it seems more interesting and customizable than artrage, much less powerful than painter or photoshop but the other later versions may be more impressive, it will be interesting to see what it can do.
I think this should have gone in the CL.
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=5644.0
Powerful and interesting it is... but not very comfortable I think.
I tried it few years ago and never really got to like this.
It has still less power than big-expensive-commercial-programs but is somewhat more complicated than... Adobe PS for example.
I especially liked the chance to spraypaint predefined brush at random angle, opacity and color, this was mega useful.
I think it's one of the several dozens of graphics programme that I installed, never really invested on it seriously though, maybe later.