Freehand painting in Photoshop...

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Yes: Wacom

If you really want to get into computer drawing buy a cheap wacom tablet (I think right now the lowest series are the Graphire, around A6-7). You\'ll need a bit of time to get used to (it took MONTHS to me), but once you get the hang of it you\'ll probably use it as your main input device, using mouse just for games.

Later you can buy better, and more expensive, Wacoms like the Intuous3 (mine is an Intuous(1) A5, and I promise that you won\'t ever need anything better than that).

Some specs here.

You can keep drawing with your mouse meanwhile, but as you already know it just plainly sucks. It drives out my nerves and is totally unproductive (unless you\'r into pixel art). And the sad thing is that it doesn\'t matter how much you practice your \"mouse drawing\" skills, they can\'t be transferred to the \"tablet drawing\" skills you\'ll need to learn if you decide to buy one. So: waste of time.

Another option is to draw on paper, scan it, and edit it (color, retouching, etc) on the computer. That\'s what I did for years until I bought my Intuous. And it would be my advice right now.