Art Set 4

Construct your own painting app

Free (IAPs) From Lofopi, lofopi.com Made for iPad Needs iOS 11 or later

There’s a glut of painting apps for the iPad, but Art Set 4 distinguishes itself with its DIY interface. By default, you get just a pencil tool in the bottom toolbar; even changing stroke width means delving into the pop– up menus. Tap the pencil to choose a brush, which can then be tweaked from the Adjust tab. Or tap the + icon to see other options, from geometric shapes to tone adjustments.

Once you start to see the options you need, you can drag their icons out of the menus and onto the toolbar — or to the other sides of the screen to create toolbars there. Keen artists who like their tools set up just right will appreciate the freedom, but some preset workspaces would have been helpful. Toolsets are stored with artwork, and you can start a new document with the same setup as a previous one, but you can’t save workspaces.

While some art apps only work at screen resolution, Art Set offers sensibly large canvas sizes. Some users report slow response at high resolutions, but drawing with the Pencil was smooth on our iPad Pro, although maximum brush sizes were sometimes limited. The brushes cover all the types you’d want — fine pens and pencils, watercolors, inks, oils and special effects — and are easy to browse. Toolbars don’t auto–hide, so you may find you have to move the canvas (a two–finger drag) to draw where you want. There are undo/redo icons, but two– finger tap for undo isn’t recognized sadly.

Layers are now supported, but figuring out how to manage them isn’t so intuitive. The app’s built–in user guide has no navigation or search, making it laborious to scroll through for info. The impressive brush mechanics feel like a work in progress: interesting things happen when you spread new paint over old, but they don’t always make sense. We found the smooshy oils more convincing than the watercolors, which fail under close scrutiny. We’d have liked scaling options for the paper textures, but there’s lots here to play with.

the bottom line. An unusual art app with plenty to delve into.

Art Set 4 provides a comprehensive box of features that you can easily arrange on screen, for a setup that suits you.

Including tools brushes, colors… it can all get a bit much sometimes.