We’ve scoured the Internet and have accumulated a great collection of art apps for your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
These applications vary from tools to help you create art, reference material to learn more about your favorite artist and cool apps that will assist you in becoming a better artist.
These are great for the artist, art Lover, and makes swell birthday gifts as well.
Art Authority for iPad
Art Authority for iPad – Open Door Networks, Inc.
Price $4.99
Compatible with: iPad. Requires iOS 4.2 or later Also available for iPhone and Macintosh.
With over 50,000 paintings and sculptures by more than 1000 artists, the Art Authority app provides access to information on the western world’s greatest artists, their major works and locations of the artwork.
The 10 GB of artwork is organized into eight period-specific rooms. These collections are composed of Early, Renaissance, Baroque, Romantic, Impressionist, Modern, Contemporary and American art.
The artists are listed in each room by movement or nationality, and there are period overviews as well as timelines and histories. There is a searchable index of all the artists, titles, subject and locations. Save your choice of works to the Favorites or the Photo apps. Artwork is captioned with the title, date, location and other important details.
Customize your search to view works by “Art Like This” or “Art Near Me” parameters. You can choose a continuing shuffle by period or the entire gallery and have offline access to works that you have previously viewed. Hyperlinks are also available for access to further information on artwork and the artists who created them.
artCircles
Price: Free
Compatible with: iPad. Requires iOS 4.3.
Discover classic and current artwork throughout the world with artCircles. Words, musicians, artists, designers, innovators and colors are just a spin away. Every time you spin through various collection wheels, new artwork will appear to amaze, inspire and educate everyone in your family.
Explore the world of art by curator, color or theme. Create your own personal collections, purchase reproductions from art.com and share your favorites on Facebook. Email your friends with your new discoveries. Customize your purchases and have them shipped directly to you.
Art History Test
Art History Test – Bluewater Publishing
Price: $0.99
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.3 or later.
With Art History Test, you can brush up your memorization skills or learn the basics on hundreds of masterpieces. This flash-card based tutor gives the title, artist, year and medium on works from the late Middle Ages to contemporary artists of the 20th century.
Customize this app to work the way you are most comfortable. Use the cards in order, or shuffle the deck for random order play. You can also choose specific topics on which to focus. The categories of artwork include paintings, etchings, sculpture and reliefs. Favorites can be added to your photo album and used as wallpaper.
Easy Release – Model Release App
Easy Release – Model Release App – ApplicationGap
Price: $9.99
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later.
Using a person’s likeness or using an image of someone’s personal property requires a legal release. A legal release protects the artist’s rights to retain income from the sale of artwork that incorporates these images.
Easy Release – Model Release is designed for the professional artist on the go. It allows you to set up your business information and include pertinent information about the model and location from your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. The release can be signed directly on your device and the signed release can be exported through an email in .PDF or .JPEG format.
EnsoMobile Artist’s Tools
This company is changing the way artists observe and use models for their artwork. With these easy and inexpensive apps, artists have the capability to create lifelike renderings with confidence. These apps are designed to focus on one specific part of the anatomy, type of motion or pose. They also have apps focused on drawing as taught in the classic method of the atelier.
Use these apps to strengthen your observational skills, improve your drawing ability and learn the intricacies of the human body at rest and in motion. Use your personal models anywhere, anytime with your iPhone or iPad.
Art Model 1 – Classic Poses
Price: $0.99
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1 or later.
This is the first in a line of reference applications that is geared specifically for the artist working with the human body. Art Model 1– Classic Poses give the artist over 300 poses of the body at rest. These poses includes sitting, standing or in repose.
Art Model 2 – Action Poses
Price: $0.99
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1 or later.
Art Model 2 – Action Poses presents over 300 photos of models in action poses. Jumping, running and walking positions are presented with 20 photographs of each pose. Each pose has full 360-degree rotation, and this app allows the viewer to zoom in and rotate the images for clear, crisp details.
Art Model 3 – Hands
Price: $0.99
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1 or later.
The hand is one of the most intricate and difficult parts of the human body to draw. Mastering the skill to render a convincing hand image takes untold hours of practice. With this extensive and easy-to-use app, an artist has the ability to practice his craft whenever he finds himself with a free moment. Use your app anywhere you can pull out a sketchpad to make the most of your time spent in waiting rooms, car rides or lounging in bed.
Use Art Model 3 – Hands to take an extended and close-up view of the hand in over 300 poses. Use the 360-degree rotation and 20 images per pose to find the detail that you want to draw. You can browse the thumbnail images and zoom in for a closer look.
Cast Drawing 1 – Basic Forms
Price: $0.99
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later.
Cast drawing is simply learning to observe and draw basic geometric shapes. This includes using shading and shadows to give a shape a three-dimensional appearance and using perspective to create a convincing form. This skill is the basis from which all drawing stems and is an elemental part of a serious art student’s training.
The seven basic geometric shapes are presented in grayscale to highlight the tonality of shadow required to render the form. With 20 images of each shape and full 360-degree rotation capability, this app gives a student all the visual information necessary to learn this basic skill.
Cast Drawing 2 – Complex Forms
Price: $0.99
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later.
Cast Drawing 2 – Complex Forms picks up where Cast Drawing 1 leaves off and provides the student with increasingly complex forms to conquer. You can study the seven complex forms independently or in combination with other shapes to create unlimited designs. Each shape is presented with 20 image variations and can be rotated a full 360-degrees. Browse thumbnail previews, and zoom in on the shapes for close-up details.
Cast Drawing 3 – The Head
Price: $0.99
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later.
Classically trained atelier artists take cast drawing classes as a basic course of study. Learning to observe and draw what one sees is a fundamental skill and requires time and practice.
These grey-scale images of the human head allow a student to practice this time-consuming skill whenever he has the opportunity. The app includes the entire head, as well as details such as ears, nose, mouth and eyes. There are 20 images of each detail, which can be rotated a full 360-degrees. You can also zoom in on the pose for close up details.
Cast Drawing 4 – Sculpture
Price: $0.99
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later.
With Cast Drawing 4 – Sculpture, you have the heads, busts and torsos of famous Greek and Roman sculptures in your pocket. Use these images to practice drawing convincing and proportional forms.
This is a lot more fun than shading geometric forms, and the skill you develop will give a big boost to artwork that includes rendering of the human body. The casts are shown in full grey-scale and include 20 images of each, which can be rotated 360-degrees. You can also zoom in for close-ups of the details, and browse the images with the thumbnail preview function.
Flipboard: Your Social News Magazine
Flipboard: Your Social News Magazine – Flipboard Inc.
Price: Free
Compatible with: iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 4.2 or later.
Create a personalized magazine of your favorite art websites, blogs and news publications. Add your own art collection, photos and reproductions from favorite artists.
This is a great way to have all your personal favorites in one compact, easy-to-access location. You can also browse through newsfeeds and timelines from YouTube, Instagram, Google Reader, LinkedIn, SoundCloud, Tumblr, Flickr, and Renren.
Handy – An Artist’s Reference Tool
Handy – An Artist’s Reference Tool
Price: $1.99
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later.
This handy little app is a great impromptu hand reference. You’ll no longer be contorted in an uncomfortable pose to view your own hand or need to take clear, unshaky photos of your claw-like, awkwardly posed hand to use as reference.
With a three-dimensional illuminated hand and a variety of poses, Handy is a useful tool for sketching and composition. The hand and the lighting rotate independently of each other, so you can position both the light source and the hand to your specifications.
Whether you’re an oil painter, Manga artist or a hobby sketcher, this app is perfect to get your drawing just right. This app is great for comic book artists, painters or casual sketchers.
Love Art
Love Art: National Gallery, London – Antenna Audio Inc
Price: $2.99
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later.
The National Gallery in London is one of the premiere art collections in the western world. With more than 250 famous works of art by Renoir, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Da Vinci and Van Gogh, this app gives zoom-in flexibility to study the techniques these masters used in creating these amazing pieces.
Love Art’s high-resolution images are grouped by theme and include videos that highlight memorable works from the collection.
MoMA
MoMA – MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art
Price: Free
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1 or later.
With the world’s finest collection of contemporary art, MoMA stands out as the premiere contemporary art museum today. The MoMa app gives you a virtual tour of their collections and is an excellent learning tool for students of modern art. The MoMA app gives users an opportunity to take multimedia tours, learn about artists and understand art terms. Use MoMA Snaps to take a photograph and send it to a friend.
The app is a useful resource for visitors and provides information about current exhibits. It also aids in searching the collections and allows users to create a soundtrack for their visit.
Musee de Lourve
Musée du Louvre – Musée du Louvre
Price: Free
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later.
This application, officially approved by the Musée du Louvre, takes you on a video guided tour of the palace and a portion of its incredible history. It features 100 of the Louvre masterpieces, which include works by Titian, Bosch, Raphael, Cranach, Holbein and Leonardo da Vinci. The program is updated with a newly incorporated Newsfeed function.
There are over 500 images and the user can zoom in for a closer look. The app also allows users to share favorite works by email or with Facebook friends.
This app gets regular updates on museum events, publications and exhibits. The Visitor Information section allows you to gear up for a visit with museum maps, times of operations and admission fees.
Procreate
Procreate – Sketch, paint, create. – Savage Interactive Pty Ltd
Price: $4.99
Compatible with: iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later.
Procreate is touted as the only studio-grade sketchbook for iPad. This full-featured app includes 45 brushes and a ton of features too numerous to list in a brief review. It supports layered PSD, transparent PNG or JPEG, and your creations can be uploaded to Dropbox for future use.
Procreate features 100 levels of undo, multi-threading for faster load times, smooth and responsive painting and auto-saving. Procreate is the only artistic drawing and painting program you will need for your iPad.
SketchBook Pro for iPad
SketchBook Mobile – Autodesk Inc.
Price: $1.99
Compatible with: iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later.
With SketchBook Pro, you can create palettes to store your favorite brushes and colors or menus for custom brush and color combinations. Your gallery of artwork can be imported or exported through iTunes or Dropbox for accessibility on any computer, and the app supports iClouds.
The template library includes grids, perspective reference and ruled paper to customize your painting experience, and a transparency mode allows you to segregate paint applications for ease in editing.
This app features synthetic pressure sensitivity. Your brush strokes and pencil marks have a sense of reality in narrowing and fading as you decrease or increase pressure to the drawing surface, which is not typical in most paint programs. Produced by AutoDesk, this app has the features a serious designer or artist needs for creating dynamic and detail-filled digital art.
Tracing Paper
Price: $2.99
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later.
With Tracing Paper, you can develop your observational skill and practice drawing anywhere with your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. Start with a photograph and begin tracing with the two pencils styles available. If you make a mistake, simply select the eraser tool and remove your error. This is good training for anyone serious about learning the basics of art. Observation is a key skill, and Tracing Paper allows a student to practice anywhere.
Tracing Paper includes a grid to overlay your photo. Rotate, zoom or move your photo to your chosen location, insert the Tracing Paper grid overlay and start drawing. There are also colored pencils to color to your work. Use this tool to practice your drawing skills or to compose ideas that you will transfer to your canvas when you return to your studio.
Yours, Vincent – The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
Yours, Vincent The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh – Antenna Audio Inc
Price: Free
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later.
The Amsterdam based Van Gogh Museum, working with Antenna Audio, has created this unique glimpse into the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh. A young, unknown artist who died poor and misunderstood, Vincent’s life is chronicled in his own words and artwork in this captivating retrospect.
Listen to dramatic readings, which are culled from his letters. Follow his progress from the early sketches of a struggling student to the bold brushstrokes that became his signature. Interviews with the museum’s letters experts and picture galleries of his work are features this application highlights.
This review is only a tiny sampling of the wonderful world of art apps available for your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. There are literally scores of apps for productivity, learning and education available at very reasonable prices. Whether you are a pigment-speckled painter who would never consider using digital art as his medium or a totally pixel-possessed graphic artist whose entire output exists in the world of bits and bytes, there is an app that’s just right for you. Investigate the world of art through your iPad and see just how far it can take you.
