Lorien

About Lorien

Lorien is a free, open-source infinite-canvas drawing and whiteboard application built for brainstorming, sketching, note-taking and freeform diagramming. Instead of working within the fixed borders of a page or image, you can pan and zoom across a canvas that extends in every direction, which suits mind maps, rough plans and visual thinking that grows in unexpected directions.

A key design choice is how Lorien stores drawings. Rather than saving raster pixels like a typical paint program, it records each brush stroke as a series of points and reconstructs the drawing when the file is opened. According to the project, this keeps save files extremely small and helps performance stay smooth even on large canvases with many strokes. It also means strokes remain crisp when you zoom in.

The tool set is intentionally focused: a pressure-sensitive brush for pen tablets, an eraser, line, rectangle and circle tools, and a selection tool for moving, duplicating or deleting groups of strokes. Background and brush colours can be changed, a grid can be shown, and multiple files can be open in tabs. Drawings can be exported as images for sharing. Lorien is built with the Godot game engine, which gives it a responsive, hardware-accelerated canvas on Windows, macOS and Linux.

The downloads include builds for Windows, macOS and Linux, plus the source code archive. Lorien does not try to compete with full illustration suites; there are no layers of effects or complex vector editing, and the project describes itself as being in development, so expect some rough edges. For people who want a lightweight, distraction-free digital whiteboard, especially with a drawing tablet, it is a pleasant and very fast tool. The source code is available on GitHub.

Key features

• Infinite pan-and-zoom canvas
• Pressure-sensitive brush
• Line, rectangle, circle and selection tools
• Tiny stroke-based save files
• Tabs and image export

System requirements

Windows, macOS or Linux with basic OpenGL support. A pen tablet is optional.

Tips

• Use the selection tool to rearrange ideas as your canvas grows
• Pair Lorien with a drawing tablet for natural sketching

Source code on GitHub mbrlabs/Lorien