[ about paintnook ]

Built for the iPad

I'm Anton, a designer. This started with a small annoyance: I wanted to paint by numbers on my iPad, and everything I could buy was a flat JPG. You imported it into Procreate and immediately started fighting it — no layers, no palette, numbers you couldn't hide, and a picture that fell apart the moment you zoomed in.

So I built the thing I wanted. Every design here is a finished Procreate project. The layers are already there: the scheme in its own locked layer, a layer to paint on, a hidden Final Check layer to compare against when you're done, the numbers in red and black, and a real paper texture on top so it doesn't look like a screen. The palette installs in one tap. You open the file and you're painting.

It prints, too. Every design includes PDF, PNG and SVG at 300 DPI plus a colour reference sheet with hex codes — so if you'd rather sit at a table with real paint, or paint on an Android tablet, nothing is stopping you. Same art, your call.

What I draw

Cottage streets with the door left open. European cafés in the rain. Night trains. Greenhouses full of glass and ferns. Gothic Halloween with more plum and candlelight in it than black. And a fair number of cats, most of them asleep.

Two levels

Most designs use 30 colours — one scene, an evening or two. The Premium Gouache pages use 60, with brush-made texture and pages that run past three thousand numbered regions. A shadow there isn't one flat brown but four. Those are for people who already colour and want the work to last.

Still learning

The shop is young and I'm still working out what people want from these. If something in a file doesn't behave, or you wish a set had something it doesn't, write to me — I read every message and I'd genuinely like to hear it.

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