Let's paint!

I've been resisting long enough. It's about time I told you my favorite painting apps for the iPad. Being an artist, painting is the main reason I love and use my iPad - especially since there are no harsh chemicals involved or messy clean up afterwards.

The first digital painting app I use is called Procreate.

I like Procreate because the controls are simple to navigate and understand. Everything is straight forward. It handles beautifully and gives little, if any, lag. If you use something like Photoshop to do your digital painting, I think you'll find that the results here are incredibly similar. It doesn't emulate real paint; it's very obviously a digital painting program. You have several brush choices, blurring tools, and erasers, and you also have the ability to create layers, as well. I've tried pretty much every painting app available, and this one is by far my favorite. (Others seem to lag or are just too confusing for me to use, and I consider myself pretty tech-savvy...)




Below is an example of a painting I did using Procreate and a stylus (I'll share my stylus preferences in the next blog). I did this one in about 1.5 hours. If you check out the screenshots in the app store, you'll see samples of gorgeous artwork I couldn't dream of creating, all made using this app.






Procreate is only $4.99 in the app store, and works on iPad running iOS 4.2 or later. Easily 5 forks, I have nothing but good to say about this app.








Now if you like something that emulates real art tools, the app I use the most is called ArtRage.




This app is RAM heavy, so I really recommend closing down any running apps you may have, and possibly even restarting your iPad before use. Not always necessary, unless you use your iPad A LOT without doing those things regularly.

Now ArtRage is fun because it lets you choose your canvas type - whether paper or canvas or even stucco and tin foil. It also allows you to choose your medium, including crayon, oil paint, watercolor, palette knife, marker... And they all act quite similarly to the real thing. It lags a little (that whole RAM thing I was mentioning earlier), but the results are so beautiful that I don't care. It hasn't left me frustrated yet.

Here are some screenshots and little things I've created using ArtRage.





















ArtRage is $6.99 in the app store and to me, well worth the price.
I give it 5 on the deliciousness meter just because of the beautiful results.





Like I said before, I've tried pretty much every art app there is, and these two are the easiest to use with the most beautiful results. I don't like bad-talking other apps because I'm sure the developers worked hard on them, so I won't name names, but the others are either too laggy and slow, or the UI is so unintuitive that I'm left frustrated trying to do something that I normally love.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy these apps as much as I do!

Bon appetit!