Mobile phone as a sketching device

My being a bit of a gadget freak, for some months I have owned an all singing all dancing PDA/mobile phone with a large touch sensitive screen operated with a stylus running Windows Mobile 6 (an XDA Exec for anybody who's interested). I have practically my whole life stored on this phone and I use it for a whole plethora of things - mp3 player, watching movies, e-book reader, writing email and any number of other uses I cannot actually remember at the moment.

A couple of weeks ago it occurred to me that if I could find the adequate software, this device would be ideal to use for doing quick sketches on the move when I didn't have my sketchbook close at hand!

A few minutes on the Internet and I found a nifty little software package called Photogenics. It's a Photoshop-like package that is scaled down to run on Windows Mobile PDAs while still retaining many features that are usually associated with high-end graphics packages, such as multiple layers, various filters and effects tools and, most importantly for me, a good selection of flexible drawing tools. I'm currently using the 30 day evaluation version, but I do plan on buying the package as I find myself using it every time I have a moment's free time.

Here are some samples of what I came up with. Note that these were all meant as quick sketches and a lot more would have been possible with the software if I had devoted more time to refining them.

This is a sketch of my little cousin Cameron who lives in Canada. I did this from some photos my Aunt Agnes sent me some days ago.

Here is a quick sketch I made while waiting for my turn at the doctor's waiting room when I had the flu. There was a cute little girl who was mesmerised by my sketching. After a while she started pestering her mum to come see what I was doing. LOL. Perhaps she'll turn out to be an artist when she grows up - who knows?

And this is an old man I did from imagination in a few minutes. I thought the wrinkles came out quite well. A good book for any prospective artists who are interested in drawing the head is Burne Hogarth's book Drawing the Human Head. Burne Hogarth is considered one of the greatest American art teachers in figure drawing - but I'll say more about him in a future blog.

That's it for now. I'll post more stuff (including some in colour) done on my mobile phone when I have time because I think that this kind of new technology is a treasure trove for artists and one that has hardly been tapped yet.