I think the easiest way to draw most of the figures is Microsoft PowerPoint, it is available and easy to use. Another way which is more professional is google sketchup. You can download it through the web.
ChemDoodle, currently version 6, is a lower cost alternative to ChemDraw. It has a feature, MolGrabber) that can find a structure on the internet and draw it for you. This is not copying an image that would require copyright permission before publishing, it uses a mol file structure table to draw the structure. IUPAC naming and structure drawing are supported. Functional groups and carbon nanotubes are available templates. NMR, TLC and property calculation are provided. The interface is not as polished as ChemDraw, which I also have and use. I find the iPad an iPhone version useful.
I also needed to draw some reactions and I stumbled upon the free addin for microsoft word ! It's really worth a try http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/chem4word/
There you can find a very useful review
http://www.gunda.hu/dprogs/
If you need "fancy" design 3d softwaer can help you. I'm skilled in Max, Maya and so. If you send me a message with a hand draw sketch I can try to help you
I used ChemDoodle and now ChemDraw 15. ChemDraw has more templates for biological systems such as membranes (under Advanced BioDraw, Bio Instruments, Bio Art, Anatomy, Microorganisms, Supramolecules template sets), , however it is very expensive; available to me through a university site licence. ChemDraw links via copy-paste with Chem3D to prepare and do molecular mechanics/dynamics and semi-quantum mechanics computations. ChemDoodle can prepare molecular models from structures. A useful feature of ChemDoodle is being able to search for a molecule with atom coordinates on the internet then automatically draw the structure. ChemDraw structure from name and name for structure are powerful tools.