Like it or hate it, digital art is here to stay. Here are four free apps for the budding artist within you. Just make sure you have that stylus ready
Artsy
A great resource for finding new artists and art work, Artsy is pegged as the ‘Pandora’s box’ of the art world. While a great go-to space for art students, the app is also great for a novice who just wants to look at art from various time periods and understand it. From Monet to Warhol to Marina Abramovic and Cindy Sherman, Artsy spans historical masters to today’s top artists. Users can experience works hanging on walls at the Guggenheim, SFMOMA, the British Museum, Gagosian Gallery, Pace Gallery, White Cube, Victoria Miro and over 600 others from 50 countries. The art work is all available at high-resolution and at zoom capabilities so high that individual brushstrokes are visible to the naked eye. Available on: iTunes
Tayasui Sketches
Quite similar to the Paper app for the iPad, Tayasui Sketches is a free sketching app that is both minimalist and intuitive in its approach. A sketch-board, it comes with an array of brushes, pens and other sketch tools, that will help users unleash their digital art skills. Users can mimic watercolor renderings to basic outdoor sketches or even comic book illustrations, with this app. For a free app, Tayasui Sketches is even better than Paper by FiftyThree, combining functionality with a very pleasing and simple user interface. Available on: iTunes and Google Play
Typendium
For typography lovers, there’s no better haven than Typendium. A simple and classic collection of some of the most beloved typefaces from across the world, Typendium provides short essays and illustrations to delineate the stories behind each of these typefaces. Type nerds can “learn why Gill Sans is considered controversial, or why Palatino is the world’s most pirated typeface”, as well as other interesting tales from the world of typography. Available on: iTunes
Brushes
Brushes is a painting app designed exclusively for iOS. The all new Brushes 3 version is universal - the same version runs on both the iPhone and the iPad, so you can move paintings between your devices and keep working wherever you go. With an accelerated OpenGL-based painting engine, users can experience painting that is both smooth and responsive - even with huge brush sizes. Brushes also auto-saves your moves every step in your painting. Available on: iTunes