The Flow: A Paint Brush for the iPad (and other tablets too)

April 14th, 2011 by: Technabob

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All sorts of attempts have been made to create “the perfect stylus” for drawing on the iPad, with mixed success. But this is the first time I’ve seen a devices designed to let you use your tablet like a painter’s canvas. The guys at Joystickers have come up with this nifty paintbrush called “The Flow,” which works with capacitive screen devices.

The Flow looks and feels just like a real paintbrush, but has special bristles which can “paint” on the screen of your iPad, Xoom or other touchscreen tablet or smartphone. I can see this working really well with applications like Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro or ArtRage for iPad.

Check out The Flow in action in the video below:

Looks pretty awesome to me, although I wish that our touchscreens could sense pressure and angle like a Wacom tablet can. Still, this is a step in the right direction for artists on the go, or just hobbyists who want to paint with something other than their fingertips.

The Flow brush you see above is still just a prototype, but if they can raise sufficient funding through Kickstarter, you can help get these into production. A basic aluminum brush will sell for $30 (USD), but you can get one for a $20 pledge. They’ve also got a limited-edition gold version just for Kickstarter contributors for $30, and various other bundles for larger contributions.