Composite Makes An Artist Out Of Anyone
Composite ($1.99) by James Alliban is an iPad 2 only app that lets your paint real life onto a canvas, creating deep and expressive works of art that you do not have to be artistically inclined to make.
This art app, created from the influence of Robert Rauschenberg’s abstract works, utilizes the world around us to allow users to “paint” onto the canvas. The iPad 2’s camera uses real time video while you swipe your brushstrokes across the screen. Each stroke is captured frozen in time, remaining still, even though the world may still be moving. As you paint more, the new image is layered on top of the old, creating rich texture and vibrant abstract imagery.
You can use either your front-facing or back-facing camera as your paint pallet. Your canvas starts out white and as you swipe your finger across the screen, the image being produced by the camera starts to appear. You can use landscapes that are in motion, or have a model sit for an artistic portrait. You can use a variety of brushstrokes, altered by width, strength of pressure, and crispness. You can also change the brush from solid line to square, pixel-like strokes, or even dotted strokes, like water droplets. There is also an option to use a photo from your iPad’s camera roll, although that feature didn’t seem particularly useful for this type of app. It almost stifles the creative impulses that the composite mode brings out.
This app is amazing. It encourages creativity by showing the user what the world can look like through the eyes of an artist. You can spend hours recreating deeply textured and richly colored images and easily save them to your camera roll. For only $1.99, you will feel like a true artist.
