Cigarettes and Coffee

Brushes
by Steve Sprang
$4.99
(Buy it from the App Store)

So yeah, that's the first thing I painted with Brushes the night I downloaded it - give me a break, I was in bed watching The Colbert Report! The app comes with a gallery of sample images that almost certainly were not created on a clumsy electronic device with only a fingertip and a few simple paintbrush tools. Images like this.

Because, I mean, that's absurd. Until, that is, you watch someone who knows what they're doing.

If you're willing to take the time to get the hang of the tools, you can do some pretty amazing things with Brushes. Any images you create with it can be dumped to your computer's primary photo library, and the program will set up a dedicated Brushes gallery on your local network for non-iPhone viewing in your web browser.

At $5, Brushes isn't exactly cheap by App Store standards (as yet there is no free "Lite" version), and its tools can be described as either "limited" or "freeing in their simplicity." If you know what you're doing, you can probably make something pretty nice with it. If you're closer to my level, you might want to hold out for a more beginner-friendly drawing app. Or at least have the decency not to show people your crappy pictures.