21st Century Finger Painting

There is an application called "Brushes" that you can buy for $4.99 for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad that is being used by artists in all sorts of new ways. Imagine, now you can carry an easel in your pocket and have all colors under the sun at your fingertips!



The fun bonus is that the program records all of your actions when painting and you can replay your painting stroke by stroke and play them back as Quicktime movies.

Artist Jorge Colombo uses Brushes to create covers for The New Yorker.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/fingerpainting/



British artist David Hockney has taken to using the iPad, enjoying the change of scale from drawing on the tiny iPhone screen. He remarks that the difference between conventional drawing media and iPhone/iPad drawing is the luminosity. “The fact that it’s illuminated makes you choose luminous subjects, or at least I did: the sunrise, for example, and flower vases with water in them that catch reflections.”



A new art exhibit in Paris aptly entitled "Fleurs Fraiches" displays his freshly painted flowers, emailed to the exhibition for display on iPad and iPhone screens mounted directly on the gallery walls.
http://www.vogue.com/culture/article/david-hockneys-fresh-flowers/

He sees a major new development in the delivery mechanism for art, remarking that he can make a drawing at 6am and send the art out to 20 people by 7am.
BBC Click's video "Hockney's art does away with the canvas"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9177512.stm

Hockney says, "Who wouldn't want one? Picasso or Van Gogh would have snapped one up."

I bet Hockney is right. Here's a retro version of Hockney's iPad experience. This scene from the 1956 documentary "Le mystère of Picasso," gives the viewer the fun of watching a painting take shape and go through a million transformations, as Picasso is filmed working behind a piece of glass.