Osmo Masterpiece is a neat little app designed to help children express their artistic abilities. It’s a creative app that allows you to take a picture of something and then draw it exactly as you see it. The app also extends the Osmo hardware released last year.

The original Osmo allows users to use real life drawings and objects in Osmo games. It uses clever AI and optical recognition to recognise what’s in front of it and integrates them into the game. It comes with three games: Hangman that uses letter cards, Tangram that uses shapes and Newton that uses pen and paper. It’s a very clever system.

Osmo Masterpiece expands on this by allowing users to become artists. You take a picture or use an image from the web. The app then strips the image down into a sketch on the screen ready to be copied. Using the Osmo reflector, you then trace over the lines on a piece of paper in front of the tablet while watching where your pencil is on the screen.

The Osmo reflector captures the pencil on the paper and shows it on screen, allowing the artists to see exactly what they are doing. As well as teaching children how to draw, Osmo Masterpiece also records your movements, allowing you to make a time-lapse video of your creative efforts. You can then share the video with others or online.

While initially, Osmo Masterpiece seems only to teach tracing, the movements and processes involved mimic what a real artist does to create original works. It’s a great way of learning the ropes while being guided along the way. While targeted at children, anyone with a desire to learn how to draw would benefit from it.

Jesmond Darmanin is a technology enthusiast who has his own blog at www.itnewsblog.com.