A must-read from the NY Review of Books:
David Hockney first became interested in iPhones about a year ago (he grabbed the one I happened to be using right out of my hands). He acquired one of his own and began using it as a high-powered reference tool, searching out paintings on the Web and cropping appropriate details as part of the occasional polemics or appreciations with which he is wont to shower his friends.
But soon he discovered one of those newfangled iPhone applications, entitled Brushes, which allows the user digitally to smear, or draw, or fingerpaint (it’s not yet entirely clear what the proper verb should be for this novel activity), to create highly sophisticated full-color images directly on the device’s screen, and then to archive or send them out by e-mail. Essentially, the Brushes application gives the user a full color-wheel spectrum, from which he can choose a specific color. He can then modify that color’s hue along a range of darker to lighter, and go on to fill in the entire backdrop of the screen in that color, or else fashion subsequent brushstrokes, variously narrower or thicker, and more or less transparent, according to need, by dragging his finger across the screen, progressively layering the emerging image with as many such daubings as he desires.
– from NYRoB
‘I lie in bed and send illustrated art lectures to friends and also my own iPhone paintings,’ said Hockney. ‘I like to draw flowers by hand on the iPhone and send them out to friends so they get fresh flowers. And my flowers last!’ Hockney is not the only one to have been swept up in the iPhone phenomenon, which allows users to download thousands of applications. They include everything from video games to translation dictionaries, restaurant finders, weather reports and live train updates. – from DailyMail