Zen Brush for Android

I’ve tried many art applications on my Android powered Nexus 7 so I thought I’d start reviewing some of them on here.

Zen Brush

Zen Brush is quite different from the other art applications. Most other apps have a myriad of colours, mediums, papers and all sorts of gizmos. This one is quite basic, but in a good way.

The idea behind it is quite simple: paint expressively on a chosen paper. There’s no zoom in/out or any fancy stuff it’s pick a brush and size and get painting (or erasing). Note how I didn’t say anything about colour. The brush colour is dictated by the paper (or background) type. Choose old paper and you get a nice dark brown ink. Choose Japanese Paper 1 and you get black ink. Choose the red Autumn paper and you get white ink.

Zen Brush example

The brush dynamics is what I love most about Zen Brush. It’s really smooth and fast. Drawing expressively with this shows the real magic of the brush. Paint slow and you’ll get dark steady lines, pause and you’ll get a blob of ink, but paint quickly and you’ll get to see the awesome brush strokes break up with a dry brush effect. Think before you swipe though as you only get one undo. Clicking the trash can will ripple your image like water and return you to a blank slate. I’d be happy enough with just black ink, but you do get two faded variations of your brush encouraging you to try a bit of Chinese Painting which I do like.

When you’re happy with your creation you can save as an image (no layers here) or share it to social media, Gmail, even send to Kindle is on the list.

Zen Brush is one of my favourite drawing apps on my Nexus 7. I love loading it up and just sitting there quietly doodling away. There’s no distractions of colours, layers or zooming, so it really is a Zen experience!

Grab the free version from: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.co.psoft.zenbrushfree. The app has a built in upgrade feature (which uses Google Play) to give you more background papers.