App: Colorific – Art App
Developer: Alexey Rashevskiy
Platform: iPad only
Languages: English, Chinese, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish
Price: $2.99 
Category: Art Apps
Paint To Your Heart’s Content – Without The Mess
I know several kids with autism who love to paint. (Whether or not this is because of the mess or the actual painting is still unclear.) If you have a kid with autism who enjoys drawing and painting for the sake of making “pretty pictures,” Colorific is definitely for you. Colorific provides a friendly interface that your kids will remember how to use once you explain it to them a little bit.
When you first open the application on your iPad or iPad 2, there will be several different stacks of paper, each with an un-painted image on top. These represent the different categories of blank slates – animals, numbers + fruit, occupations, and more. Once you tap on one, several templates come up, and you can choose which one you would like to paint.
The Colorific iPad Art App Interface
#1 – Once you’re ready to begin painting, you should take note of a couple of things. The first is the “Size” selection located on the left side of the screen. This is for choosing the thickness of your colored pencil.
#2 – The second thing you should notice is the tray of colored pencils on the bottom – this is for selecting the color you want to draw with.
#3 – The third and final thing is the eraser, on the bottom right hand side. Just tap it once, and you can erase by touching the paper.
The Colorific interface is easy to learn because it looks like you’re actually drawing something. Your colored pencils are laid out in a way that’s probably similar to when your child is drawing at home (albeit more neatly), so they’ll probably remember how to use different colors.
One more thing you should explain – the paint bucket. This is the app’s “fill” feature, which allows you to fill in certain spaces with the selected color. Of course, this may not be perceived to be as fun as drawing, so your kids may not use it as much.
Further Reading: Letter Tracer App
