I’ve had blast doodling with this Flash-based “Jackson Pollock” painting program (http://www.jacksonpollock.org).
The program works fine with a mouse, however it’s definitely loads of fun with a Tablet PC or UMPC. My personal favorite is to paint using my fingers.
The page will start with a white canvas. All you need to do is start moving the cursor over the canvas. This will cause paint to “spill” from your cursor. Stay in one spot and the paint will accumulate into a big blob. Move the cursor around and a paint trail will thin out. To change paint colors tap on the canvas. Once you have your Pollock painting the way you want it, be sure to capture the screen using Alt-Print Screen or something like the Snipping Tool in Vista. (Be careful not to move the cursor or stylus over the canvas once you have the painting just right, otherwise you’ll spill more paint on your artwork! Kind of annoying, but makes sense.)
I’ve been dabbling with oil-on-canvas effects in Silverlight and this Flash-implemented Jackson Pollock painting program has me rethinking how simple the effects can be. I’d like to take a stab at creating my own Pollock painting app in Silverlight. Maybe someone has time to beat me to it? This would be a great open source project for CodeProject.com.