The Friday Fillip

I’m an iPhone user. Hell, I’m a Mac fanboy. But I’ve been slow to come to those apps on the iPhone that don’t claim to increase my productivity somehow. Professional deformation, I guess. But I’m finally plumping for an iPhone app that would be a real stretch to use in connection with law: Brushes. This $5 app lets you paint on your iPhone. I know, I know: finger painting, like Trix, is for kids. Uh uh. Nope. Not a bit of it.

Don’t believe me? Just take a look at some fantastic finished products, all done on a canvas as tiny as that used by classical miniaturists, and all done with finger tips. (Click on the thumbnail to see the full image).

The two images on the right were selected more or less at random from the Flickr group that hosts nearly 7,000 of such pixel paintings — in case you needed inspiration. The two images on the left are the work of Jorge Colombo, whose work is hosted on the New Yorker website and, occasionally, on the front cover of the magazine.

All of this might be interesting enough — even to the BlackBerry bunch — but what adds that Apple-like touch is that the developer of Brushes has enabled you to save your fingerstrokes in a special downloadable file, should you wish to see your picture emerge stroke by stroke. You can see this in action if you examine any of the New Yorker pictures done by Colombo, because they’re videos of the making of his art. Tiny but mighty impressive.