I-Phone Brushes Application

I did not hear about this innovation until Robert Genn apprised me in one of his biweekly e-notes.
Genn learned that the recent cover of the New Yorker bore an image that was produced with an iPhone. No it wasn’t a photograph, strictly speaking. It was a photo conversion using a remarkable creation. Jorge Colombo's cover for the June 1, 2009 issue of The New Yorker was composed entirely in the Brushes iPhone app. It’s called New York City-scapes.

Artists like myself may be initially chagrined that anyone can now produce a piece of art on a handheld device without opening a tube, handling a brush or getting dirty. Of course, people have been doing art on Photoshop and comparable programs for some years and the debate has raged as to whether it is to be considered legitimate art.

Here’s the deal with ‘Brushes.’ You can begin working from a blank canvas or an existing photograph. The application features several different brush-stroke sizes (from slim and fine to rough and wide), high-powered zoom capabilities, and a plethora of color and saturation options to produce works of art that are then immediately available as downloads to any location in the world. People are actually buying the art.

Should traditional artists of pastel, graphite, acrylic, oil and watercolour be concerned that their own work will be devalued? That’s my immediate instinctive response. Yet more objective reflection makes me think that our original art will survive as collectors’ preference.

GPS Application

Beyond that conclusion I am struck by the reality that there are far more important aspects of life with which to be occupied. 1 John 3:17-18 - "If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth."