Art Academy: the personal portable drawing tutor for the Nintendo DS

Besides being home to several hit games, the Nintendo DS has also brought us several educational suites as well. Nintendo continues this trend by cooking up Art Academy, bringing a digital canvas and paint set into your back pocket.

Lessons start with the basics, such as rendering light and shadow

Perfect for those that would like to learn without actually attending a class, Art Academy features interactive lessons that focus on the basic fundamentals of drawing. Students are lead through step-by-step instructions, courtesy of the on-screen digital tutor, Vince. Lessons can be paused and bookmarked for later, a nice convenience in today’s hectic world.

Using the stylus as a pencil or brush, drawings are created on the bottom screen, while reference images are viewed on the top screen. There are different virtual tools to choose from, such as the pencil and the paint brush. Colors can be custom mixed and added to the pallet, or chosen from the traditional color wheel. Besides participating in the lessons, users can also paint freely in the aptly-named “free paint” mode to use all the available tools.

Art Academy was originally a set of downloadable DSiWare apps, entitled Art Academy: First Semester, and Art Academy: Second Semester. The new Art Academy that will be sold in stores includes all ten lessons that came from the DSiWare version, as well as adding new mini lessons, 20 virtual picture frames, and 80+ motifs (figures to draw) to practice with.

A grid and reference image assists in drawing figures

Using the DS’s local Wi-Fi abilities, owners of a copy can share a “Demo lesson” with other DS users to try out the game — only 1 master copy of the game is required for others to download the demo. Additionally, DSi owners can use the system’s camera to take photos of anything to use as the top-screen source.

As an artist and one who has taken several fine arts drawing classes, I am delighted to see a game like this for the DS. I feel that a personal interactive art tutor is a fantastic use of the device’s capabilities, and hope that it is successful in the marketplace.