Our daughter (who’s turning four soon) loves to draw and paint, so we’ve reviewed her five favorite drawing or painting apps for the iPad. We’ve used each app and all five are currently on our tablet. Some of the apps are also available on the iPhone and iPod, but these reviews are strictly for the iPad versions. She uses and loves all of these apps (and so do we!).

Project Aqua – for iPad and iPhone by Adobe

Project Aqua by Adobe brings a whole new layer of magic to kids art time. It feels like a grown up drawing app that remembered kids want to play too. The brushes respond smoothly, the textures feel real, and the tools make even simple sketches look way fancier than you would expect. Kids can doodle, paint, shade, and even experiment with light and shadow without needing to know anything about art theory. Everything is laid out clearly and the app does a great job of helping children ages 5 to 12 discover features through curiosity, not complicated menus with ad free tutorials thrown in for good measure.

Download Project Aqua for free from the App Store here.

The big standout is how Project Aqua blends digital painting tools with fun guided prompts and gentle hints that help kids level up their drawings without pressure. The color options are almost endless and the included brush library gives little artists the chance to try styles that look like pencil, chalk, watercolor, markers, and more. Older kids will appreciate the layers feature, which lets them build and edit their art like pros. There are Undo and Redo buttons plus autosave so no masterpiece gets lost.

Oh yeah, did we say it can even bring drawn objects to life in 3D and allows kids to host a virtual art exhibition in an art gallery of their very own? Most features work great offline as well so makes a decent art easel on the go as well for active families.

Drawing Pad

By Darren Murtha Design

Drawing Pad is my daughter’s go to drawing app if she wants to get especially creative. There’s a rollout tray on the side that lets you quickly select from brushes, markers, pencils, stencils and backgrounds. My daughter picked it up right away. If you want a blank canvas to start from, I don’t think there’s a better children’s drawing app out there. You can choose backgrounds and pictures from the camera roll, but the Drawing Pad truly shines the brightest for its ability to just quickly start drawing.

See more information here.

The app is visually straight forward and intuitive as long as you remember that the house icon brings you back to the previous selection. It’s probably the most realistic of all the children’s drawing apps and has a minimal learning curve. It works in both Portrait and Landscape mode and features Undo and Redo buttons for those occasional accidents. There are tons of colors and brush sizes to choose from. If your child craves to be the next digital Da Vinci then this might be the app that gets them on their way.

Doodle Buddy for iPad

By Pinger, Inc.

Doodle Buddy was the first drawing app we downloaded and it was the first time my daughter truly saw the iPad as an alternative to drawing on paper. The interface is ridiculously easy and the quirky selection of stamps makes it a guaranteed hit with young children. When I look at my camera roll on the iPad, the pictures saved from this app far outnumber any other apps my daughter uses.

Find out more about Doodle Buddy here

It features an unlimited color palette with tons of cartoon stamps and sound effects that will amuse the kids. It also works in both Portrait and Landscape mode, unlike the majority of the other drawing apps out there. Doodle Buddy includes around 10 backgrounds to choose from as well as the ability to use images from your photo albums. Doodle Buddy is not as fully featured as some of the other painting apps, but my daughter returns to it time and again so they must be doing something right.

123 Color HD: Premium Edition, Talking Coloring Book

By Steve Glinberg

123 Color HD is my favorite children’s coloring book style application. Not only is it educational, it has a lot more to offer than a traditional drawing program. It includes hundreds of amusing cartoon style sketches with Paint by Numbers, Paint by Letters (both upper case and lower case) and of course freestyle painting. The first two remind me strongly of those paint by numbers coloring packages my parents used to buy when I was a child.

Check prices here.

Aside from sentimentality, one of my favorite features is the Perfect Paint option. With this turned on, any coloring you do on any of the hundreds of pages is limited to staying within the lines of the object you’re painting. With 30 colors to choose from, it’s easy to make a picture perfect colored page for those of us not so artistically inclined. 123 Color HD also features a Paint Bucket to instantly color in an object (perfect for younger children) and a traditional Paint Brush.

As well as the coloring portion, the Premium Edition includes learning letters (upper and lower case), and numbers and colors that are spoken in English, Spanish, German, French, Russian and Hebrew. The Premium Edition also includes all 35 coloring books that are otherwise available as in-app purchases from the less costly version, however if you want them all then the Premium Edition is the way to go. If you’re looking for coloring book equivalent apps on the market, 123 Color HD is probably your best bet.

Drawing with Carl – for iPhone & iPad

By Tayasui

Drawing with Carl is a great, fun way to draw. The interface is clean and easy, and the character stamps are great as well. Created from a spinoff of Talking Carl! (an old iPhone staple in the vein of hugely popular Talking Tom), there are a lot of creative spins on a standard paint brush. It is quick and easy to create gorgeous artworks using Drawing with Carl simply with the brushes they give you. There’s also an in-app purchase called Monster Pack (the only one in the app) that is animated and supposedly quite fun to play with. I haven’t gotten around to buying it so can’t comment yet.

Download from iTunes here.

The bright, vibrant interface and the clean lines give Drawing with Carl and polished look. The limited 10 color palette is easily offset by the number of drawing tools this app includes. It’s an easy app to use and drawing fun colorful images is a breeze. Most kids will also love the mirror mode that duplicates every finger swipe on the other half of the screen. There are Undo and Redo buttons that give your child a chance to backtrack. The only negative about Drawing with Carl is that it always feels like you’re using an app. With more and more drawing done digitally these days however, maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Drawing for kids: doodle games

Drawing for kids: doodle games is a great little app teaching your young ones how to color simple characters. Though not a traditional painting, coloring or doodling app, the focus is trying to teach younger children learn more about colors and coloring itself. T

Get price and information here.

My son, who just turned seven, enjoys this one (though it’s made for younger children in the toddler range). Of course my daughter also enjoys learning how to color the cute animals and other pictures.

It’s a pretty simple app, but it keeps the kiddos entertained with fascinating sounds and funny animations.

Other Notable Entries

Squiggles!

Though not exactly a drawing program, Squiggles, a free app, is great fun for the kids. It’s marketed to very young kids, but it’s honestly a lot of fun no matter your age. Squiggles takes your hand drawn squiggle, and turns it into a bird’s nest, a lion’s mane, a curly beard, and more! You just let your little one doodle on the screen, and press PLAY to watch their drawings come alive. With a price tag of zero Squiggles is a must download to anyone with kids and an iPad.

Check for more information here.

The term affluent is sometimes associated with it as well, but now almost everyone has a few tech toys with them. As such, I suppose you can call us flashpackers but, in truth, I like to refer to us simply as travellers or even nomads since we tend to follow the seasons. Our little ones tell everyone we’re Barefoot Nomads and to be honest, it puts a smile on my face every time they say it.

When we first started seriously travelling back in ’02 one of the first places we stopped was Singapore. At the time Singapore was said to be miles ahead of the West in terms in technology. It usually took a few months for products to show up in Canada and the US that were already collecting dust on the shelves in this Asian country. As such, we had decided to pick up both a digital camera and a new laptop while we were there. Though we were far from pioneers at the time, a traveller with a decent laptop was still a rare sight.

These days, finding a serious traveller without a laptop is a rarity and digital cameras are cheap and plentiful. Some of the equipment the typical backpacker takes and uses could probably fund a small expedition however it’s funny how vital our tech seems to us.

When we travel, we now have an arsenal of tech toys that we have trouble living without. Of course, we also tend to long stay so packing up and lugging this stuff about on a daily basis could help redefine our must have list. We’re also a family of four so a few things on this list are more for the kids than for us and if they help kill a lackluster rainy day while on the road, they’re a welcome addition to our backpack of tech.

Of course, our largest accessory is a laptop. The one we’ve been using while travelling these past few years is probably going to be retired this fall and replaced with something larger and more powerful. This one is ultralight and has a 12″ screen. For its size, weight and age it served us well. We’re still debating whether we should go 14″ or 15″ on the next one. Weight is definitely a concern however staring at a tiny screen for months on end isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. At home we have some gorgeous 23″ IPS displays that we stare at day in and day out and frankly, that 12″ is a little hard to take some days.

The second biggest item is our iPad. When we first bought it I seriously doubted its usefulness. I thought it would be just another gizmo that cost too much and collected dust. Far from it, between us it’s in almost constant use and having to share it has actually caused stress on more than one occasion. Whether you’re lounging on the couch, quickly checking your email on the way out the door, seeing what Mother Nature has in store for the day, Skyping your extended family or friends while watching the little ones in the tub, killing some time playing Solitaire or one of the other million apps available to you in the Appstore tablets are here to stay and great to have. I’ve actually written a few posts with it while in Costa Rica. I don’t believe tablets are anywhere good enough to fully replace a laptop yet however they’re getting better all the time. The new Windows Surface tablet could be a real game changer in that regard.

Of course, we travel with a digital camera and a few extra SD cards. We’re not the best photographers out there and that’s simply because we’d rather enjoy a place than spend time photographing it. With that in mind we usually travel with point and shoot cameras. The smaller, lighter and faster to set up and snap the more likely we’ll take a picture. With everything else we take and with 2 kids in tow neither of us have any desire to lug around a big DSLR with a few lenses. Sometimes I regret we don’t have as many nice pics as some others out there (though somehow we have managed to take thousands upon thousands of them) however we usually use that as another reason to get out and travel some more.

The next most used device we travel with is an unlocked iPhone. A few years ago we had done some serious research into world phones and settled on the iPhone as one of the best in that regards. Neither of us had ever owned a Mac product before then but I have to say, they’re definitely intuitive. We now own a small pile of SIMs from a bunch of different countries that we keep in a small bag. Most are no longer usable (we always buy prepaid SIMs and after a period of inactivity they expire) however they’ve served us well. Most countries sell prepaid SIMs for next to nothing and it’s always cheaper to use them than call long distance. Of course, Skype, Google Voice and a few others make even phones sometimes redundant.

Our son is definitely a gamer so he always travels with his Nintendo DS. Most parents are shocked with how little we let him play it though. We use it more for emergencies and as rewards for good behaviour than normal play. If we didn’t limit his use we might as well be staying at home because his nose would be constantly glued to it and he’d be missing everything we’re travelling for.

A few years ago my brother bought our son a set of decent walkie talkies.

Two way radios work for miles, are easy to carry and even have built in weather stations to them. We usually keep one in both our day packs and use them whenever Micki and I go on our separate ways while shopping or giving the kids some one on one time. It’s more of a convenience thing however it has helped us locate each other on numerous locations. At home we each carry a cell so it’s not a big deal, however we usually only use one cell when we travel since we’re together nearly all the time. The kids also love playing with them and they can act as a good distraction when we need a few moments of sanity.

Ever since they’ve come out we’ve travelled with a pair of USB sticks. We’ve found them great as an extra place to store pictures or when heading out to an Internet Cafe. There have been times when one of us needed some time away from the kids and walking to the nearby cafe for some uninterrupted computer time has been great. They also come in handy when you can’t get internet access, but have pre-written an email or two to send back home. We used to love writing up emails while sitting on our porch staring out at some beautiful ocean beach or majestic mountain and then run to the nearby internet place and quickly send them all off. It also saved on the amount of internet fees we used to have to pay.

Some of the other accessories we always keep with us include cables such as an HDMI cable (so we can hook the laptop to a TV to watch movies with) , an Ethernet cable (in case internet is wired we can then set up an ad-hoc network so we can share WiFi with the iPad and iPhone), a headphone to RCA Y splitter cable (so we can push sound to the TV or to a stereo receiver), a Belkin 3-Outlet Mini Travel Swivel Charger Surge Protector with Dual USB Ports (in case we need a few extra outlets and it also has 2 USB charge ports built-in), 2 iPad/iphone cables and chargers (so we can charge the iPad/iPhone/2 way radios/NDS), a headphone splitter and headphones for all of us (the kids can then share watching a movie on the iPad or notebook in blessed silence).

We also bring along a few spare batteries for emergencies and a Petzl Tikka headlamp. The headlamp has gotten good use in the past and packs up small and light in the carry case. The batteries in it last forever. We also take along a few small disposable flashlights for the kids.

In terms of tech toys that may seem like a lot but to be honest it all fits comfortably in a daypack. We usually split the pile in half for weight and security reasons while we travel and also so we can have quicker access to something if we need it.

If there’s anything you think we’re missing or if you want to know exactly what or why we travel with something send me a comment. I’d love to know what you all consider “essential tech”.