Steve Jobs, the co-founder and former CEO of Apple Inc., died yesterday at age 56 after a long illness. Art collectors of Art Kabinett social network utilize Apple devices everyday to interact and share their passion for art. We mourn the death of Steve Jobs. His was the face behind many of technology's biggest innovations of the past few decades, including the Macintosh and the iPod, iPad and iPhone, also became the face of technology in pop culture. The iPhone, iPod and iPad weren't just regarded as state-of-the-art products — they were products that infiltrated the markets en masse. The Internet blew up with reaction to Jobs' death Wednesday. Though not quite on the same scale as the announcement of Osama bin Laden's death, Twitter (and Facebook) exploded in near-similar fashion. The fact that so many people were affected by the news of a former-CEO's death really says something, especially at a time when so many Americans are fed up with corporate America. A multitude of art apps When Apple first unveiled the iPad to the world, it was categorized as nothing more than a glorified media consumption device. Yet in the months that followed, app developers and creative users proved that the Apple tablet could also be a powerful and versatile creation tool. A little more than a year later, artists are using their iPads as portable art studios for everything from sketching ideas to painting digital masterpieces. But if you are new to finger painting—or digital art in general—it may be difficult to figure out how to proceed. So in the spirit of getting started, let’s simplify the process of creating artwork on the iPad with a rundown of some of the best iPad artwork apps available today: 1) Brushes ($8), by Steve Sprang/Taptrix was the first iPad app that many downloaded and the main reason that some artists purchased an iPad. The Brushes interface is easy to get used to: a simple toolbar at the bottom of the screen controls everything. All of the options that you would expect to see are there, including a color wheel, brush menu, undo/redo, and a layer menu. The app offers fast brush stroke performance, and smooth pinch zooming, navigation, and auto save. All of the artwork that you create is stored inside the built-in gallery. Most impressively, the Brushes app automatically records the process of creating each painting and allows you play back the process later, right inside the app. It even gives you an option to export your actions as a file, which can be converted to a video using the accompanying Mac application, Brushes Viewer. 2) SketchBook Pro 2 ($5) is a mobile version of Autodesk's desktop digital artwork application of the same name. At first glance, the interface has a very similar feel to that of Brushes, but as you begin to delve deeper into SketchBook Pro's menus you will discover a whole range of extra sliders and settings that will make pro users feel right at home 3) ArtRage ($7), by Ambient Design, offers a very different approach to painting on the iPad with tools that aim to replicate rather than replace traditional painting techniques—and with stunning results. The oil paint brush behaves exactly as you would expect, with strokes that have a natural and textural quality to them. Using the pallet knife, you can easily spread paint around the canvas and blend colors together in an incredibly realistic way. There are simulations for watercolor paints, an airbrush, pastels, and a range of other impressive tools to choose from. 4) Lucky Clan's ArtStudio for iPad ($5) brings some of the best features from across a range of painting apps into one place and is probably the most desktop-like app that I have used on the iPad. It has a broad array of brushes including an airbrush, wet brush, and a useful scatter brush for creating patterns and textures. There are hidden panels of options for brushes, colors, and layers that give you extra choices, when needed. 5) Procreate, ($5) by Savage Interactive, is a painting app built with performance in mind. It is incredibly responsive and has a beautifully simple user interface. It features a fixed menu around the outer edges of the canvas, offering immediate access to sliders for adjusting brush size and opacity, as well as undo and redo buttons. The full brush, layer, and color menus are accessible and well-presented with large visuals. 6) Adobe Eazel for Photoshop ($5) is Adobe’s first attempt at a painting app, and an exciting demonstration of how the iPad can be used in conjunction with desktop software. Eazel features an interesting liquid-paint simulation, which can produce natural looking, loose paint work. Adobe has implemented a unique five-finger interface for Eazel, which literally places its tools at your fingertips. This simplified interface is fun to use, but can be irritating at times, as it requires a certain degree of dexterity to navigate successfull 7) So far, all of the apps mentioned are intended for artists who like to sketch and paint, but recently Steve Sprang/Taptrix, the developers of Brushes, released a new app called Inkpad ($5), which is a full blown vector illustration app. Using your fingers you can tap and plot Bézier curves with the pen tool, draw geometric shapes, and make path adjustments as you work.
