Every time a drawing game is released on the 3DS I expect it to be just the same as the last. All of them different in their own ways, but none of them having every tool you need in one place. Well I have finally discovered the perfect paint program for your 3DS, as well as my new favorite thing to do on my down time. Painting Workshop is great for all kinds of reasons, you can draw, create shapes, use funny clip art, import pictures from your 3DS and tons more! Checkout some of my random creations!

Painting Workshop has over 20 tutorial lessons that you can go through as you please, and are very helpful in getting you acquainted with all of the tools and controls. They’re not very interactive tutorials but they really don’t need to be. Each lesson is about a minute long, though it’s not very tough to figure out what you’re doing when starting out I recommend going through all of them. Before starting your masterpiece you must choose which hand you want to draw with and then a theme. Themes do not affect your canvas or tools at all, they’re just a fun way to customize your background, tool bar, load icons, and music.

The tool bar is really simple to maneuver. You can choose to equip specific tools to the X and Y buttons making it easy to switch back and forth when working. The start button lets you do a quick save or go back to the previous save if you don’t like something you’ve done since then. There are also undo/redo buttons (left & right on the control pad), zoom (L&R), and the control stick lets you move around when zoomed into your canvas. You can also use the stylus and touch screen for everything I just said above if you prefer. I honestly think it’s the most comfortable control system I’ve used in a drawing app.

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 The tool bar is in a handy spot, its comes down from the top of the touch screen when you press down on the control pad. It expands up to three times, most of the tools you can use are very customizable so you have a lot of options to choose from as seen in the screenshot above. When your finished choosing a tool you can tuck the tool bar back into its little nook in the top screen conveniently moving it out of your way until you need it again. A few examples of the fun tools you’ll be using are “stickers” which are weird/funny clip art pics you can add to your drawings. Pattern filling/drawing which lets you create awesome textures and effects to backgrounds or surfaces, and a wide color pallet that is also fully customizable.

 While there are many more tools than that to choose from you also have the option to add up to 5 layers to your pieces. This makes it possible to create amazing backgrounds for your pieces or add detail to specific areas of the canvas, it’s a really cool feature. One downfall was not being able to upload screenshots to Miiverse, this is due to Miiverse’ strict (and pesky, but understandable) policy on posting pictures and personal information. Since you can upload pictures from your 3DS and edit them in Painting Workshop this automatically excludes this game from screenshot posting. Luckily there is an online gallery (Right here) where you can post your artwork which can also be saved on your SD card.

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Aside from not posting on Miiverse I really cant find anything else negative to say about this game, besides the fact that it’s not on my WiiU ;). If you’re a serious artist or someone who likes to doodle when you’re bored I highly recommend Painting Workshop. For the low price of $4.99 you will definitely get your moneys worth. With the variety of tools and things to do, you’ll be inspired to do all kinds of crazy amazing things. So stop by the eshop and hone those creative skills!

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