In case you’ve never heard of Doodle.ly—dubbed the “social sketchpad” app—you can use your fingertip or stylus pen to doodle something on your iPad and then share your handiwork with others.
With a new update, the free Doodle.ly has added the ability to create your own user profile and follow someone’s drawings or they can follow you—not unlike the popular Instagram photo app.
To get going, simply pick from one of several pens, coloured markers, pencils, highlighters and an eraser to create something on the white canvas. It could be a caricature of a celebrity, humorous comic strip, sketch of new clothing fashions or an artsy bowl of fruit. You don’t need to have any skills to draw and share your doodle with others, see what your friends are working on or follow those talented types with something of interest to you.
When you open Doodle.ly you’ll be immediately taken to your palette of tools and white screen, but you can also tap on icons at the bottom, such as Latest (the newest doodles from the community), Popular (see which ones are trending) and Following (the Doodle.ly people you’ve subscribed to, with their works displayed in a chronological timeline).
Be forewarned you’ll see some pretty weird stuff, too, such as a pensive pimply face girl, tributes to the boy band One Direction and talking wedding cakes—so you never know what you’re going to get when perusing what’s doodles are out there. Parents should be relieved there are no inappropriate images here—well, not that I saw in the week I spent with the app.
If you like what doodle you see, you can choose to share it (email, Facebook, Twitter and others), Like it (think Facebook) or follow the person by tapping on their name. Too bad there’s no room to post comments like you can with Instagram, but perhaps that’s coming in a future update.
Overall, this free app is ideal for those who like to draw and share their creations, or for iPad owners who’d like to follow artistic types.
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