Colors!

The Colors! app by the developers Collecting Smiles is a very good learning tool for digital painting. It is a clean simple drawing app with 3 brushes and an eraser tool. It was originally developed for the Nintendo DS and 3DS. It was then developed for the iphone and ipad and finally android devices. Colors! seems like a limited app, but the paintings that I have seen people create are amazing. The brush styles are hard flat brush, soft airbrush, and bristle brush. Each one can be adjusted for size and opacity. There is no blending tool, but you can use the opacity settings to blend in a watercolor glaze-like style. In fact, painting with this app is a lot like a watercolor or gouache painting. The app also has layers, eyedropper, a colorpicker, a flip horizontal or vertical tool, eraser, an import photo function, undo/redo buttons, and a playback feature. You can export your painting as an MP4 video file or in canvas sizes up to 5120x3200 pixels.There is a limited free version and a paid full version. The full version opens all the tools and gives you access to the Colors! gallery where you can upload your paintings, view and playback other people's paintings, and follow other artists. For me, the gallery playback feature is well worth the price of admission. I learned a lot about digital painting watching the playback of some truly great artists who are on this app.

"Saguaro Sunset"

Here is the UI with brushes, colorpicker, and size and opacity settings.

Here are the layers and their functions.