The long awaited iPad vector app from Steve Sprang debuted at the last MobileArtCon has been released today  in the App Store.

Steve Sprang’s first app Brushes became an immediate sensation in 2008 triggering a fingerpainting revolution. Inkpad is a full feature vector software.

Here is the description from the app store:

Description

From the creators of Brushes! Inkpad is a professional vector illustration app designed from scratch for the iPad. It supports paths, compound paths, text, images, groups, masks, gradient fills, and an unlimited number of layers. Inkpad was designed with performance in mind – it can easily handle drawings with hundreds to thousands of shapes without bogging down.

To celebrate the launch, Inkpad will be available for $1.99 for a limited time. Get it now before the price goes up!

Features:

• Very high performance. Select, scale and rotate hundreds of objects with zero lag.
• Create arbitrary bezier paths with the Pen tool.
• Create compound paths, masks and groups.
• Create text objects.
• Place photos from your albums.
• Powerful scale and rotate tools.
• Gradient fills with interactive editing on canvas.
• Swatch library.
• Unlimited layers per drawing.
• Rename, rearrange, delete, hide and lock layers.
• Snap to grid, points, and path edges.
• Isolate the active layer for easy editing.
• Email drawings as SVG, PDF, PNG and JPEG.
• Send SVG, PDF, PNG, and JPEG directly to your Dropbox.

One of the coolest things about our online network of mobile digital artists is that it’s very unlikely for a good app—no matter how small or under the radar—to stay there for that long. If an artist sees potential, they’ll be more than willing to explore it and share feedback about it with others.  And if someone says “download it.” and nothing else.  Well, its a good sign, for sure. Fortunately for me, someone was nice enough to share a little app called Sketchclub with me.

Self portrait by MROB (sketchclub for iPhone)

When it comes to newer apps, I tend to start off small. I’ll do a quick test of tools by incorporating its use into my daily metro sketches. It’s an uncommitted and pain-free way of testing the waters. Thankfully, Sketchclub had both an iPhone and iPad version. So I downloaded it onto my iPhone for some quick exploration.

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SpectraBrush (itunes) was made as part of the “Sound, Image and the Brain: Cognitive Live-Arts Technology in Contemporary Game-Oriented and Accessibility Paradigms” project at Goldsmith’s.
Chris Kiefer of Goldsmith’s:

“Spectra Brush has emerged out of a program we made to explore the capabilities of the iPad for interactivity and audio analysis. We’re really interested in how people connect sound and vision and how people use creative software like this, so the application is sending us telemetry data from anyone who volunteers, and we’re hoping that we get some interesting insights when we analyse it later this year.”

So, when you hum low eg, you get these brush shapes:

On a higher sound level, the brushes look like this:

It’s a fun experimental app, you can grab it for free in the app-store.

Adobe has put the layers in the Ideas app on sale at $1.99 for a limited time. http://adobe.ly/ikmQGt

Corliss Blakely has just put the finishing touches on the new ArtStudio manual.

Art studio is a full featured app that can seem intimidating at first so don’t wait, download the manual now!

Adobe Ideas is a snappy mobile sketching app. It is a well designed with a simple and clean user interface but not loaded with features like many apps we use.  Ideas is vector based, giving it almost unlimited canvas and no limits on output size. This is not a small thing considering that many great mobile apps output only at screen resolution. And of course it seamless integrates with Illustrator, Photoshop and other Adobe products.

You can download the app for free, but you will have to purchase “layers” as an in app add on (€3.99 $4.99). I tested the 1.2 in beta, just before it was released on Valentines day.

The new release will permit you to switch the navigation from left to right. It gives you VGA output from your iphone or ipad, though I haven’t had an opportunity to try this yet, but it makes for a great way to present an idea (pun intended). It has also considerably boosted performance, zoom is very fast.

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Autodesk (creators of Sketchbook Mobile and Sketchbook Pro for iphone and iPad) have teamed up with O Magazine to create Sketchbook O,  a free drawing/painting application for readers who’d like to explore and partake in the joys of fingerpainting.
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Fun new app (iTunes) that computes a watercolor particle system while you paint.

Auryn Ink’s Key features (from the press release):

• Watercolor simulation with edge darkening, granulation and back-run effects that all evolve and take form in real-time while you paint.
• Choice of canvas texture that affects your brush strokes and paint flow.
• Realistic brush model with control over pressure, bristle patterns, and more.
• Unique color selector that converts your color choice into a virtual pigment.
• Pigment simulation that blends color much like real watercolors combine: the wet pigments mix together and separate dry layers form glaze effects.
• Control over amount of water on the brush, which influences flow effects.
• Ability to paint with water alone to pre-wet the canvas for wash effects.
• Concise control over drying the canvas, and completing (fixing) glaze layers.
• Sensitivity to gravity: paint flows downward when the iPad is tilted.

The payoff for computing watercolor behavior seems to be resolution for now, but nice results nonetheless. The app is free for now.

Luis’ painting will become the new splash screen of SketchBook Mobile:

This might also mean, a significant update to SketchBook Mobile (iTunes) might be pending.

More impressive art by Luis is to be found in his flickr stream.

Will ArtStudio 3.0 for the iPad support vector graphics?At least this screenshot posted by the developer suggests so:

[Update] Probably shapes and gradient fills, not neccessarily vectors.