New artists paint on the screen of the iPhone

In a not too distant future, visitors to a museum of modern art could be quite different from those we now know: for through halls of a building, the visitor can admire in your mobile phone or computer in his works that have not been created on canvas, but painted with fingers on a touch screen.

Brushes, an application for the Apple iPhone that allows you to "paint" with their fingers on the screen of this phone or iPod Touch, has become a popular tool among developers interested in experimenting with new technologies.

And not just talking about fans. Artists the likes of David Hockney are using Brushes and Canadian painter Matthew Watkins recently opened in Bari (Italy) a exposión of works only on the screen of your iPhone.

With over 100,000 downloads since it went on sale in August 2008, Brush has become one of the most popular iPhone applications, and sales soared after the New Yorker magazine published on its front page last June a work of Portuguese artist Jorge Colombo done with this application.

"It's accessible to anyone," said Steve Sprang, creator of Brushes, told The Washington Post. Brushes can paint without the mess "and it is always with you," said Sprang, Appple received from 70 per cent of $ 4.95 (3.30 euros), which costs the program.

In Flickr, one of the most popular portals for hanging pictures on the net, was born a group called iPhone Brushes Art Gallery-"where there are more than 10,000 works of different artists all created by painting with his fingers on the screen iPhone.

Some approach the hyper-realism, as images of American Henry Maddocks. Others have a more surreal, like those of Hubertk or Matthew Watkins.

Patricio Villarroel, Chilean musician and artist living in Paris, is the most active member of the group with more than a thousand works published.

"The finger painting is so funny ...! Us back to childhood," he told EFE Villarroel, who has been doing digital painting with Corel since 1996 Panter-x, but a year ago has become a fan of iPhone.

"It gives you great ease of use, anywhere and any way," he says. Brushes is the most used application, but also paints Villarroel similar programs for the iPhone and touch nptr and artists.

With over 100,000 applications already available, Apple has found the goose that lays golden eggs in these programs for iPhone and iPod Touch, developed mostly by programmers outside the company and can be downloaded from iTunes, its online store.

Many are free and most do not exceed five dollars (3.33 euros). Among the most popular programs this week include several games and a bar code reader for telling us if the product to have in our hands can be found cheaper online.

One of the newcomers is Cry Translator, an application created by the Catalan firm Biloop Technology that, say its creators, can "translate" the crying of babies to see what happens.

This dream of every father and mother can be downloaded for $ 9.99 (6.66 euros) until 11 November-after cost 29.99 (20 euros) - and promises only ten seconds to figure out if the baby cries from hunger, sleep, pain, or simply bored, no doubt another application on iPhone will remedy.