I still remember pleading with my elder sister to help me draw the diagrams for my Biology class. She could draw the leaf with perfect proportions and beautiful veins. Her microscope and her digestive system looked so much better than mine! Over the years, I finally just resigned myself to thinking “I suck at drawing.” And that feeling has persisted ever since… till now.

It was a Stanford, when I was TAing CS247 at Stanford with Bill Verplank (Note: Bill was recently inducted into the SIGCHI Academy, Congrats Bill!), when I realized that it didn’t have to be so. Bill is the master at drawing. I’ve never seen anyone express themselves as fluidly while sketching and drawing at the same time in real-time (watch the video for Chapter 2 of Designing Interactions). Bill explained that drawing can be learned and it takes practice.

Drawing is not a natural ability that some have and others don’t have. It is a learned skill. It requires learning to translate what we see in 3-dimensions into a 2-dimensional representation which can be expressed on paper. In order to do this translation correctly one has to understand perspective, proportions, lighting and more. These are things that I simply didn’t spend enough time on as a kid and I have always felt handicapped by my ability to express myself visually.

I’ve written before about Osmo — one of my portfolio companies that is changing the way kids interact at the cusp of the digital world and the physical world (See: The Ingenious Osmo). Today Osmo is introducing Masterpiece.

Masterpiece is a drawing tool that helps you to learn how to draw and sketch. It shows you how to translate something your eyes see into something your hand can draw. It’s magical. And you can take any picture from anywhere — something you capture in the real-world using the camera, or an image you pull from the Web of your favorite character or artwork, or one that you choose from its built in library. It’s an endless drawing book that also allows you to adjust to your level of expertise (or lack thereof in my case!) and even scale, rotate and compose images to create your own ‘Masterpiece.’

Here is the Osmo Masterpiece intro video…

Osmo’s Masterpiece is a free app that is available for download in the AppStore (iPad only). It works with your existing Osmo Base and any number of drawing implements. You can use pens, pencils, paint brush, crayons, or even charcoal to draw on paper, newsprint, card stock, tile — and of course even on the table (as I’m sure some kids will, much to their parents’ dismay!).

Congrats to Osmo founders Pramod Sharma and Jerome Scholler and to the whole Osmo team on once again creating something that is trunly innovative and novel — nothing like thi has existed before.

If you don’t already have an Osmo, you can order one at PlayOsmo.com or on Amazon.com. Or if you absolutely can’t wait walk over to your closest Apple store and pick one up there.

Update 03/13/2015 12:07 AM: I had my 5yr old daughter try Osmo Masterpiece earlier this evening and here is what she created….

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