Texting has come a LONG way. In fact, it has morphed into painting. With your iPhone and an application called Brushes, you can let your fingers do the painting. Brushes Viewer, a free application, “allows you to replay your Brushes paintings stroke for stroke, export them at very high resolutions (up to 1920 x 2880), and even export them as QuickTime movies.” Brushes Mobile Painting has spawned a paint anywhere “revolution,” that you can follow on Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.
One of these iPhone paintings became a New Yorker cover. The artist, Jorge Columbo, has a finger painting blog at The New Yorker. Yes, you read that right: finger painting at The New Yorker. Columbo is hoping to “build suspense as he builds up layers of color and shape” on a weekly painting for The New Yorker. He appears in the ABC clip below.
iPhone painting is accomplished by stroking on the screen with your finger, which prompted another artist in the clip to call the application “a stroke of genius.” This is finger painting without paint, so there’s no clean up, and you can do it anywhere without lugging any supplies. The canvas is a tad small, perhaps, but that doesn’t seem to be a deterrent for enthusiasts.
Another artist from the ABC clip is Walt Disney art director Stefan Kardos. His iPhone paintings can be enjoyed on flickr and on his blog, Stef’s Sketches.
Here is an example of an iPhone painting, showing you every stroke:
Another iPhone painting, by Martius90, demonstrates the many revisions required to get to this point:
I also viewed iPhone artwork 118, Eve from Wall-e speed painted on iPhone (this one illustrates all the steps involved for creating a painting), Painting in iPhone Brushes app-Bus urbano (love this one, even the music), Painting in iPhone Brushes app-street, Brushes iPhone painting 5-31-09 is a portrait of dmhallart’s wife (now there’s a smart idea to name and date your paintings at the same time), and Michael Jackson iPhone Finger Painting by Josh Cassidy. Right now, there are about 400 iPhone paintings on YouTube. By the time you start exploring, I am certain there will be more–a LOT more.
Some of us don’t mind the cleanup that painting demands: the colorful reminders on all of our clothes, our hair, under our cuticles. (I admit it, I do NOT own an iPhone.)
Just the other day, I was discussing painting techniques with my artist friend Laurie Skantzos. We both agreed that putting our hands in the paint and “feeling our way into the painting” was a very freeing way to work. The emotions flow through your fingers in such a direct way. Before you know it, you find yourself scratching, flinging, flicking, smearing, splattering. You also caress, stroke, push, or even hit and pound the canvas. You are channeling your emotions, and they are powerful!
Your hands and the paint become partners in a colorful, kinetic choregraphy ~ and what emerges comes directly from your inner archives.
Silverspring Studio 
absolutely amazing – a new revolution :)
Crazy, isn’t it? As a kid, I loved to draw on an etch-a-sketch. I liked the challenge of trying to make something with only one line.
Here the challenge is the very small “canvas” and using one finger as your only tool. Soon they will have a special stylus, no doubt–a mini pen like the one you use for a Wacom tablet. I noticed some artists getting finer details with their fingernail.
Some of the work is amazing, and is obviously done by very accomplished artists.
Totally wonderful! Another way to exercise the creative spirit! I don’t have an iPhone…yet. I still like the creative mess but this could be fun on trips!
That’s what I was thinking, Deb. To capture spontaneous drawings and all the steps it took to make them. A new tool to go along with the digital camera.
This is incredible…artists will use every tool available to express themselves! I loved the “eye” one…wow. Do you get Robert Genn’s weekly newsletters? He was just speaking about this…it’s a very cool trend! Oh, how I wish I had a better handle on today’s computer technology…! Have a wonderful day — it’s always such a pleasure to visit your blog. :~)
Yes, artists WILL use every tool available. And collect every image, and sensation, and pay attention to their emotions so they can express them. It sounds very much like what a poet does as well!