iPad App review: Penultimate

According to my blog stats, it's teacher planning time!!! The most visited portion of this blog lately is the lesson planning idea page. Pretty cool, if you ask me. And like you all? I am doing plenty of planning for next year as well.

Pinterest has been a huge wellspring for inspiration for me but I also find lots of ideas via my blogroll managed by my Google reader. Every time I see something I like, I will star the posting so that I can return back to it when I need to. Now, this system has worked for me but it has also been a little clunky (if you will). It required me to do a ton of printing, filing, spreadsheeting, and inevitably forgetting about the file stacks of lesson plans that I had printed and never really looked at again since all I ever really used was my single printed spreadsheet that I would write all over and dirty up.

Enter: Penultimate for iPad

OH MY LAND!!! This app TRULY blows me away!! It does everything that I was doing in a format that is incredibly efficient, portable, and shareable, but also doesn't force me to give up certain elements of lesson planning that I just can't stop myself from doing - like using pictures for reference, making lists, compartmentalizing my ideas, and physically writing notes about what I intend to do with my project plans for each of my classes.

Penultimate is essentially a wellspring of digital notebooks that you can use to put pictures in and then handwrite notes about what you want to do with them. I created a notebook for each of the courses I am instructing this year and I access them by simply touch-scrolling through the lineup until I get to the one I want.

When I get to the one I want, I simply touch it open and it brings to me to the last page I completed.

Pages can be changed to be a grid/graph background, have narrow or wide rule notebook lines, to-do checklists, etc. You can import pictures either from the on-board camera OR from your camera roll. You can put more than one picture of the page and layer them as well.

After you put your picture on the page, you can hand write notes on or around it as you like. What works for best for me for the purposes of supplies ordering is just putting a picture (for visual reference/recall) and then listing the supplies I anticipate needing right next to the picture. This works well for me because there are a lot of project ideas that I see that are not standard art education lessons and I do a lot of top-down planning.

Once you have a handful of pages finished, you can view them all together and rearrange them if you like. The below is a view of all of the notebooks open to their last completed pages but this is the same view you see if you look just at the pages within one notebook. You can touch and move any of the pages to rearrange them and reorder them if you need to.

Something I haven't done but plan on trying is sharing and/or exporting any of my notebooks either to email or to other apps. This is good for people who might prefer typing over handwriting since *I think* the Penultimate imports elsewhere as an image file that is put on a page where you can type things around it.

Before I got Penultimate I considered Evernote (which I got and honestly don't care much for) and Pages. I got Penultimate randomly but I am so glad that I did. It is the ultimate digitized notebook if ever there was one.

Fessing up already

OK so I have a secret that I have been sort of keeping from this blog and it's honestly pretty dumb but I have done some thinking about it enough (perhaps the better word would be rationalizing?) to finally share it with you all.

Here's my confession: I am (almost) addicted to making virtual pottery on the Let's create Pottery iPad app.

I know. I know. This is so dumb!  I should have been working on reviewing/playing with other iPad apps that are art and design related vs. playing what is essentially a game that could just as well be called Farmville or Cityville.

(And you can stop reading now if you want because I will also admit that I have adamantly REFUSED to jump on the Farmville bandwagon so if I have just offended you, I am sincerely sorry because after puttzing around on the pottery game I am here to tell you I. GET. IT. I am WITH. YOU. and your virtual/sim game/life thing that you cannot get enough of!!!)

But seriously? The pottery game is AWESOME.

IT IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I mean, yes - it IS a game since you don't just fake hand-throw pottery on a fake pottery wheel while fake nature sounds play in the background like you are working en plein air...

... and then fake fire it in your fake kiln...

... and then fake sell it at a fake art auction with a fake soundtrack of an auction gavel and people bidding.

Yes. It is definitely all of that fakeness. BUT! There are also "design" challenges that come in fake email requests and are essentially commissioned pottery requests that have a little message with the design requirements and a picture that you can use to inform your sculpting and glazing decisions. And some of the challenges are actually quite challenging! Especially the castle one toward the end - which would be, like, level 30 or something.

Uhmmm... yes. I did play it all the way to level 30 and beyond and I actually finished the game.

(I am shamed and saddened because I want the app designers to get off their duffs and MAKE. MORE. LEVELS. ALREADY!!!!)

But here's the thing. Even after you finish all of the design challenges, you can still just keep making cool designs and trying to get high scores at the auction so you are essentially competing against yourself.

You can also do things like look up different types of pottery - as in, studying art history (LOVE IT!!!) - and have that help you to inform your sculpting and design decisions.

And if you get really into it, you can start posting some of your favorite designs to the Let's Create Pottery online community gallery (I KNOW. Don't even say anything about me doing this. *Sigh* Just don't.) And look at other people's work and try and see if you can make some of the cool stuff they make!

*crickets*

...

...

*more crickets*

(-_-)

But honestly. It's not all that bad. I mean seriously!

And on that more serious note, I have actually thought about how this app can extend far beyond it just being an online simulation game. 

Now, I don't know enough about throwing pottery on a real wheel so I can't tell you if this so closely imitates that process but as far as problem solving and design challenges that a teacher could give to students similar to the fake commissioned pottery requests within the game, I feel like that is definitely something that could work in an art classroom. I mean, it will never ever be able to take the place of the experience of making REAL pottery but I don't see why it couldn't work as a warm-up activity or idle-hands -type activity.  Of course, you would need to have at least one iPad and more than just one would be much more preferred since I can imagine other students would want to partake in the activity as well. Some ideas for design challenges? Well here are some I challenged myself to make...

 Pretty fun, no? They are all a similar shape/silhouette but I am sure others could be done as well and it would just take some brainstorming. Other stuff could also be done, like, requiring students to use certain color groupings...

The way I see it there's actually a lot that could be done beyond just using this app as a simulation game.  So, that's my review for the iPad app Let's create Pottery. In my defense, I haven't actually been playing near as much as when I first discovered the app and I use it as a bit of a motivator (for myself) when I am in the midst of graduate school work and I need a break. Someone else who likes it too? My four year old daughter! Yeah. It's that easy AND fun.

Who needs a canvas anyway?

About a week ago I attended a wedding as the flowergirl "wrangler" (my daughter was the flower girl) and while I was there, a wife of a friend of my husband's sat down next to me right next to me and said, "Can you paint faces?"

I was a little caught off guard as I was all fancied up in a cocktail dress and not in artist/art teacher mode but the moment she mentioned painting, I snapped right back and didn't hesitate to reply with an affirmative YES. What happened was this wife of a friend of my husband's had asked another friend of my husband's if she could face paint (this person was at the wedding) and this friend referred her right to me. I was completely flattered.

As it turns out, I have professional face painting sets that I use with the Art club at school for the Harvest festival every October and also almost four years under my belt of overseeing the whole student operation. Usually I am not the one who does the painting because it's so much fun for the students to do and they also get service hours for it but occasionally I fill in for breaks. Still, I thought I was a little rusty despite my willingness to say that I am a face painter. *shrug* Luckily, I am not as rusty as I thought and on Saturday I set up a very workable face painting station at a circus-themed for some preschoolers.

I went to school and got the storage box with all of the face paints and then added things to the mix that I expected I would need like small paintbrushes (for details), a circular paint palette for mixing the paints, a divided bucket of water for cleaning brushes, a roll of my favorite paper towels by Viva, and my iPad with a pre-loaded album of face-painting ideas. (I did a lot of full faces because I knew I would have that luxury and they are so much more fun.) I also brought along wet wipes to clean faces when there were mess ups or changing of minds for do-overs and a plastic grocery bag for my trash.

I set up my little station and painted almost a dozen faces total (mostly full faces) and got rave reviews much to my surprise and delight. I started with the birthday boy and even did some adult faces! These shots were all from my instagram feed - username is dreampraycreate if you care to connect that way!

 

This enterprising young gal was actually the balloon twister! She did such a great job and this party was her first ever. I think she might have been 10 or 11. So inspiring to cross paths with a young artist like this.

This "customer" was so pleased with his knock-off Mike Tyson design that he gave me a tip. He was hilarious and insisted that having his face done up like this will aid him in greater success (and increased intimidation) in a beer drinking tournament he was headed to later this evening. He was the party host's brother.

I had such a good time doing face painting that it only makes me that much more excited about doing it this year with the Art club. Hard to believe that the summer is coming to a close and school is fast approaching but I think doing this helped me to feel a little more excited and less sad about the end of summer and start of school. Also, after this endeavor, I am so much more confident about doing face painting services and also overseeing the whole operation that I almost feel like it could be fun and a great fundraiser to have my Art Club available to do more than just the Harvest festival. We'll see. Also, I am thinking that this year I am also going to get stuff for them (and me, as well) to learn how to do balloon twisting and do that right next to our face painting station. I have never done balloon twisting but I have always wanted to so this gives me a great excuse to indulge in that.

iPad App review: Procreate - sketch, paint, create.

Of the three art apps that I said I was going to review, this one is what I believe the most complex in what it enables you to do - use layers and fine tune the tools and mediums that you have to use - but now that I have used the others one a little bit, I firmly believe that it is the best of all and I don't even mean this with regard to experience of the artist using. I mean with regard to how well it functions and how intuitive the overall design and navigation seems to be. The Artrage and Art Set just seem clunkier compared to Procreate. *shrug*

Right now I am working on a bit of a personal endeavor with the help of my church and local community and I have been putting off working on some of the things I need to do for it for a good while now. Well, tonight, with the help of Procreate, I finally got off my duff and did a little bit of what has been hanging over my head. Below is something I whipped up in Procreate.

Again, I did not use the Sensu to make this - didn't even use the stylus end even - but rather just my finger pad. Ignore all of that for a minute though. Instead, focus on some of the different things that I have in what I made above.

While the patches/swatches of color underneath the lettering look like pastel, they were actually paint and of a brush setting with oil paint that I feel like was really natural looking. (Can't remember the setting or brush but just trust me.) I also used ink pen of different kinds and tips AND a pattern tool that gave me that awesome planked wood grain background. Maybe I'm easily impressed but I just LOVED that pattern tool. It took me just a few quick swipes and *voila* there was a wood plank wall!

I feel like the marks that you make in Procreate are just so much more accurate and the action of making the marks - meaning the responsiveness of the touch screen in the Procreate program - is just so much faster than Art set or Artrage. That alone made me love Procreate better. And with me loving it this much even with doing just finger swiping, I can only imagine how much better it might be using the Sensu - either the brush or stylus end.

Procreate is $4.99 in the app store but I think the app is so good that I would honestly pay even more than that. Even at the price it is, it's the most expensive of all of the apps I have reviewed so far - well, not Art Authority but I mean the art studio ones - and I still feel like I would almost be willing to pay as much as $10 for it. Seriously. I think it's that good.

So, after this review and the last one, I have about three more that I still plan on doing - Art Set, Auryn Ink, and SketchbookX. I might do a 3D app but haven't decided yet. I kind of made a little bit of a personal rule that I wouldn't do any 3D apps but I might have to break that because I am so curious.

iPad App review: Artrage and Art Authority

OK. So I have finally completed what I feel like is a reasonably share worthy piece via one of the aforementioned art apps called Artrage.

In all honesty, I am pretty happy with it despite the fact that I feel like it isn't all that great. I mean, well... it's definitely lacking in some places in terms of solid technique. Aside from that though, I wasn't looking to create a masterpiece and rather just do a quick study of my four year old daughter while she was sitting still and painting a birdhouse.

While I would have liked to have done this with the Sensu brush, I did it with the stylus part of the brush. *shrug* The medium I picked was chalk pastel so using the cushioned stylus end just worked better and felt much more natural and intuitive.

Here is an instragram of the cushioned rubber stylus end of the Sensu.

I tried doing it with brush end but it didn't work so well. I attribute this to the fact that I am still just trying to learn my way around the app itself. Pair this with the fact that I have very limited experience with the chalk pastel medium and what you get is what you see above.

My initial aim was to try and do the oil painting but it just wasn't working so I switched to chalk pastel. That's why you see such a heavy grain of the support itself. (I chose a canvas grain support gessoed in black.) I REALLY wanted to try and work with the Sensu but it just wasn't working out. I'll get there though. I feel like it was a good move for me to just think about familiarizing myself with the range of the app versus trying to turn out a masterpiece.

I *think* Artrage allows for the use of layers but I didn't do that. I am actually going to try not to (for all of the apps that I review) if I can can get away with it. Why? Because you really don't use digital layering in real artwork - I mean, the closest thing would be to let each layer dry before doing the next but I never do that. I like working wet into wet and since my goal is to use the apps to imitate the techniques I'm used to, I'm going to avoid using layers.

One other app I have discovered that I REALLY am liking is called Art Authority. Basically it's a very comprehensive art gallery (in virtual form) as much as you could ever imagine. I mean, every artist and their works are not in it but the big names and major movements in art history are there enough. I LOVE studying masterworks and this is app is making it really REALLY easy to do that. My goal is to use some of the masterworks to do mastercopying via some of the iPad apps.

So that's it for now. I would say on the whole I really like Artrage. I almost started doing the above in Artset but it didn't have quite the more specific adjustments (like adjusting pressure and color saturation, etc.) the way Artrage did so I switched from Artset to Artrage almost immediately.

Will continue to keep you all on the up and up of my experimenting with all of the apps. If you, too, have been trying out the apps, I would love to stay connected with you and trade thoughts, tricks, and inspirations via the comment section below. Thanks so much.