The Big Picture: Art Games for Kids and Adults

As an art educator I have witnessed first hand the power of  games and how they can be used to teach students. If a students becomes engage in the game and retains important information it makes my job a whole lot easier. I use Apps Gone Free almost every day searching for new an interesting apps for my own personal use, art apps to review and games to play. In my search have found a number of art games and interactive apps that teach students about color theory and art history.

Here are a few of the apps that you can use with your kids or test your own knowledge of art history.

Color Vacuum 

Color Vacuum introduces kids to RGB color mixing.

Color Vacuum ($0.99), an iPhone and iPad app, encourages kids to pick up and capture colors using the device's digital camera. The app lets kids see how Red, Green and Blue are used to create other colors through RGB color mixing method. The app also measures color intensity and saturation. As you move the view finder in the center over an object the color being captured appears in the center of the device's viewfinder in a small bubbles. The color shown in the bubble is captured and broken down into RGB color in tubes at the bottom of the screen.

The instructions are a little fuzzy and an adult will probably have to walk the student or their child through the app and show them how it is use.

Pros

• Uses a very interesting and stylized interface to teach kids about RGB color.

Cons

• The app  is a little to confusing for kids to grasp on their own without help from an adult.

I give Color Vacuum...

2 out of 5 stars

Blendamaze

Blendamaze mixes color theory and a traditional roller ball game together.

Blendamaze ($2.99) is a tilting board game that invites the player to role a white ball into different pallets (areas of color) to explore color mixing. Once the ball drops into the pallet it sinks in, the ball changes its color to that of the pallet and gets kicked back out somewhere else onto the wooden. When you get to higher levels you can role the white ball into different pallets and begin mixing colors. As the ball roles around on the board moving from one pallet to the next it creates a streak of color on the wooden board showing the path the ball has taken. The game has different categories such as Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and Complimentary colors with about 30 different games per category. Depending on how well you do in each game your receive stars to track your progress.

Pros

• A very simple application that teaches the fundamentals of color and color mixing.

Cons

• If you don't like "tilt and roll the ball through the maze" games then you probably won't like Blendamaze.

I gave Blendamaze...

4 out of 5 stars

Art Race

Art Race is a great brain teaser for art lovers!

Art Race (Free) is a wonderful flashcard game testing the player's ability to pairing an artist with an artwork. The game places a single image on your screen along with two artists' names. A timer counts down limiting your time to choose (or use Google to search for the answer) which artist you believe made the work. There are also stars to keep track of your score. If you get too many answers wrong then you will have to start that section over again.

Once you score enough points a new game level will open with new works of art and artists to choose from. The game has five painting levels ranging from Art Lover to Master, two sculpture levels with Appraiser and Expert and an architecture level that reads "coming soon". A great way to test your knowledge or prepare for an Art Appreciation exam.

Pros

• A great app for art and art history lovers!

Cons

• Needs more minority, female and contemporary artists to help round it out. 
• Needs embedded information on artists or movements or at least a link to the artist's Wikipedia page! 

I gave Art Race...

5 out of 5 stars

Van Gogh: Painted with Words

A well structured time line of Vincent Van Gogh's life.

Van Gogh: Painted with Words ($4.99), a biography on the artist's life, telling Van Gogh's life story and breaking down his work into various themes. The user can follow the timeline in sequential order or jump around from section to section. The app is also allows you to view Van Gogh's work in themes set to music so you can look at the work rather than following the biography.

Pros

• Great imagery and well laid out, the app gives you a variety of ways to interact with it and the audio intro is a good overview of Van Gogh's life.

Cons

• I don't know if the app has enough to justify its $4.99 price tag.
• The app is bright and colorful making the user think that it is good to use with children, but the level is really young adult and up.

I gave Van Gogh: Painted with Words...

5 out of 5 stars

Rembrandt

Rembrandt has great high def (HD) images and video links.

Rembrandt ($0.99) is an extensive collection of works by the master covering a wide range of media (painting, drawing, printmaking, etc) using high def (HD) quality images. The app also has a video section covering a number of art movements that link to YouTube. Its make, LOVA, has created similar apps for Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Manet, Titian, etc at $0.99 each. There is also an Art History Interactive which highlights 50 masterpieces for western art.

Pros

• Amazing HD quality images and the YouTube video library is pretty amazing as well!

Cons

• I watched some of the videos (awesome), but it would be helpful to know which videos would be appropriate for students in advance and which where not. 

I gave Rembrandt...

5 stars out of 5

Here are just a few of the educational art apps I have run across while researching studio apps for the iPad, iPhone and Android devices. Once I have a collection of 4 or 5 new educational apps and art games I will post them again to the site. Thanks for reading!

LiveSketch HD for the iPad: Mimicking Drawing Tools without Control

Most drawing apps give you a wide range of tools, choices of color and the ability to create your work using layers, but like Zen Brushes, LiveSketch HD is good at doing one thing and one thing only... creating work that looks like a mathematical mess rather than a true artistic creation.

LiveSketch HD allows you to draw lines on the screen that look like a cross between graphite drawing and vine charcoal, but rather than leaning on the strengths that each medium brings to the drawing board (no pun intended) it falls somewhere in the middle. Drawing with LiveSketch HD allows you to sketch, change colors and incorporate backgrounds and that is about it.

The line work is very stylized, but again the quality is entirely to uniform to make for a good drawing app. I spent time exploring the app and all its functions, but I was quick to realize that the app itself is very limited.

LiveSketch HD brings a charcoal look to their app.

The Pros and Cons for LiveSketch HD

Pros

1. The app creates a unique line that I have not run across in any other sketching app and does a great job of mimicking charcoal or a soft sketching pencil being dragged along its edge.
2. The app is relatively inexpensive ($1.99) and if you really like the look of the marks than it might be worth the price.

Cons

1. The app has no brush options allowing for little variety when it comes to line and value
2. LiveSketch HD has no layers and it only allows you to export your work to either the iPad's gallery or send it out via email.

Over all I feel that this app is entirely to limiting to recommend it unless your are really taken with the line quality and look the app provides. Don't let the fact that Japanese artist Yoshitoshi ABe used this app in a YouTube video be the only thing that persuades you to purchase this app. 

I give LiveSketch HD...

1 star out of 5

Paperless - Draw, Paint and Sketch App for the iPad

Drawing of my beautiful wife using Paperless.

While searching the vast reaches of iTunes I occasionally stumble upon an app that reminds me of other apps that I have already reviewed. Paperless - Draw, Paint and Sketch for the iPad OS 4.0 or later reminds me of other apps I have reviewed, but not in a good way.

If you have even thought about sketching on your iDevice you have run across Paper by 53 which is one of the staples when it comes to digital sketching on your iPad. Like Paper, "Paper-less" creates sketchbooks for you to organize your work by title so you can find your project later. Just like Paper and Sketches, two apps that faced off on my blog a few weeks ago, uses a basic array of drawing tools. Paperless feels a lot like Paper in its utilization of pencil, pen, brush, a marker and an eraser tools to create an edit marks. Unlike Paper, Paperless comes with all the drawing tools pre-loaded where you have to purchase tools in Paper by 53.

Paperless does allow yo to change brush settings, but not on every brush.

Paperless has re-do and undo buttons that allows you to go back or go forward up to 15 changes. You can use the color tool to organize colors by using a color palette of recently selected colors for quick access later on. You can adjust the each brush tools' opacity, shape, smoothness, etc. as you go into and lay-down marks. I did find however that when you made changes to size of the brush or its opacity that the brush itself didn't always change. I was sketching a tea kettle on my stove as I started to play with the app I decided the outline was to thick. I thinned the line and it took about 10 marks before the line actually thinned. I would continue to make marks and after 5 or 6 marks it would become thick and the next 4 or 5 would change to thin without any adjustment to the app on my part. I know that some apps utilize pressure sensitive styluses that can adjust to changes in pressure, but at the time I was using a standard stylus that does not register the change.

I decided to really see what this app could do so I drew a picture of my beautiful wife Malinda. I started with a blue layer as an under drawing, outlined it with black and added a third layer for color.I quickly realized that you can not change the order in which the layers are stacked, so I had to trace the image with black underneath the blue under drawing. Going back and forth, turning the blue layer on and off was very frustrating. I appreciate that Paperless allows you to create layers, but not being able to change the order of the layers ruined a good sketch. Unless you go into the app and figure this out on your own there is no way to tell. You are very limited with three layers so I decided to go in and add a background to the image after I started the sketch. I then realized that if you change the background it will cover over whatever is already there instead of adding a new background on a separate layer.

Paperless does allow you to create a sketchbook to store your sketches as well as lets you name each sketchbook adding pages to it as you go. I decided to add my sketch of Malinda to my "ArtTechReview" sketchbook when low and behold I discovered that you had to create the book first and add pages as you go. Unfortunately that meant that I could not add Malinda to my collection! :(

Pros and the Cons for Paperless...

Pros

Paperless lets you create sketchbooks to organize your work.

1. The app is fairly inexpensive as far as drawing apps go and it comes with a lot more options out of the box than similar apps like Paper by 53.
2. You can create sketchbooks to organize your work and personalize your projects as you move along.
3. There are a number of build in controls to edit different drawing tools allowing the artist to change opacity, size of the brush, brush thickness, etc.
4. You can access a number of colors that you have previously selected which keeps you from having to use the eye-dropper tool to select previously used colors.

Cons

1. Layers! I can't tell you how upset I was when I discovered that my under-drawing was stuck on top and that you could only use 3 layers in your work. For someone who uses 10-20 layers per drawing this felt very limiting.
2. Brush controls were very limiting. I also discovered that only certain adjustments could be made in each tool. The pencil for example only allowed you to adjust the size of the mark and nothing else. The brush allowed you to adjust the thickness, opacity, softness, etc, but these options were left off other tools. I understand that there are only so many adjustments that could be made with a real pencil, but it would be nice to experiment a little more.
3. Not being able to add pictures to sketchbooks unless you build the sketchbook first.
4. You can rotate the iPad, but not the canvas with your fingers. If you notice I have one vertical picture and two horizontal. The tools do not move and re-adjust themselves like they do in most drawing apps that I have tried. 

Over all I would go with Sketches over both Paper and Paperless if I wanted a good sketching app. Sketches is a buck cheaper than Paperless so if you want a basic and easy to use app then go with Sketches and leave Paperless in the nether regions of iTune's app store .

I give Paperless for the iPad...

2 stars out of 5