Keeping our kids creative and urging them to learn can be difficult in an age where children would really rather sit in front of the television or play a mindless video game. Any tool that helps parents inspire their kids to draw and create on a daily basis is a valuable one. The DrawQuest iPad app, created by Canvas and released this week, does all of these things in a fun social atmosphere.
DrawQuest, touted as “a free drawing community exclusively for iPad”, presents a different and exciting drawing challenge each and every day. The app prompts the user to draw all manner of different things, from “draw your favorite super hero” to “decorate the snowman”. Each day will present the opportunity to create something new.
There is, of course, the social aspect as well. DrawQuest is not specifically a children’s app, and while it will definitely appeal to the 6 and older crowd, there should be parental supervision in regard to the social and in-app purchasing parts of the app. If you choose to use the social feature, 
each drawing will be transformed into a video of the user’s ‘virtual paintbrush’ swirling around to create the drawing. This video can be shared with friends or relatives who also use the app. While this may not be ideal for some children in the eyes of their parents, the social feature does have the potential to be a link between loved ones who live far away, with close parental supervision.
There is also a neat ‘ star’ system that allows the recipient of drawing videos to award stars, letting the artist know that they liked the drawing!
The new DrawQuest app by Canvas is available for download via the Apple iTunes App Store button below. The app is free for download and is available for iPad only. It requires iOS 5.1 or later to operate.
