Some Time with Brushes (iPad)

I’ve decided that I wanted to “test drive” some of the available painting and drawing applications for the iPad. For the next couple of nights, I’m planning on spending time drawing, sketching, and painting using some of the applications that I’ve purchased for my iPad, and I will then write about my opinion of the apps. I have purchased both pixel based and vector based programs, and am planning on covering both types.

First, pixel based programs, which for people that don’t know the difference, use dots (pixels) to create art. These are what people who paint typically think of then they think of painting programs.

I have first started with Brushes to create the image below. Partly because I have used Brushes on the iPhone, and because it was mentioned in a recent ImagineFX article, and I wanted to give it some time.

Things that I really like about brushes are the things that many people who have reviewed the program have also said they liked. It is reliable in that (so far) it hasn’t crashed on me. It supports layers and allows the user to export his/her work to Photoshop, GIMP, or your other painting program at your disposal that supports PSD. It also has the blending modes for the layers that many of us have become accustomed to, such as multiply, add, subtract, and overlay (I think there’s another, but right now it escapes my mind), also you can adjust the layer transparency which allows for you to sketch and paint in the same program on different layers.

As for the brushes, you get plenty, and you are given the ability to edit the transparency/opacity and size of the given brushes. Plus you can also change the spacing of the brushes. In addition to those options a user will have the ability to turn on brush effects that change the size and opacity of the brushed based on the speed that the painter moves his/her finger (or stylus if you have one).

Colors are like many of the higher end painting programs, whereas the artist has the ability to choose unlimited options from a color wheel as well as light/dark, and transparency sliders.

All in all this is a great program, my only complaint is the same one that I know I’ll have for another program that I will use later. Smaller size brushes look more pixelated and seem to be missing the smooth feeling that many people hope for when working with closer detail.

Now the icing on the cake is the ability to view all of your paint strokes after the painting has been completed. There is a companion program (brushes viewer) that allows the user to import the session to a Mac and export a QuickTime video, however, I don’t have a Mac and currently, I don’t have access to that function. When I emailed the company asking about this feature, they quickly replied and said that this is something they are working on, so I am hopeful that this will be included in the near future.

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~ by gixgidea on August 3, 2010.