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Firm Management

Apps We Love – Art

We are focusing on Artist clients in the niche practices area of this month’s magazine, and so we decided to go down the path of art creation and appreciation apps as a corollary to those articles. I like to think of Venus Paradise coloring sets as ...

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We are focusing on Artist clients in the niche practices area of this month’s magazine, and so we decided to go down the path of art creation and appreciation apps as a corollary to those articles. I like to think of Venus Paradise coloring sets as the first art app – but we’ve come a long way since those boxes of numbered colored pencils. In fact, if you search for “draw” or “paint” in your phone apps, you’ll spend the rest of the day looking at all of the options – there are hundreds. For this article, we surveyed members of the CPA Practice Advisor community to find out what their favorite apps were in the art genre. We’re not restricting these results to drawing and painting, and we’re looking beyond art creation to art appreciation as well. So get out your right brain, and enjoy!

Doug Sleeter, founder of Sleeter Group and Sleeter Consulting, and currently wielder of wood carving tools, recommends Craftsy – “A great app for finding art projects for all ages, and for taking courses to build your skills.” He also is a fan of Pinterest. “Find great ideas for the home, yard, or anything in life. Find a great web page, just pin it and visit all your pins later when you want to pursue the idea. Organize pins into topic areas, and share ideas with friends. Very addictive.” And for those who prefer pursuing the literary arts, Sleeter suggests you visit Goodreads, “A great app for sharing book reviews with friends.”

Melisa Galasso, director at Cherry Bekaert, and Becker CPA instructor, recommends Canva. “Canva is great for designing Facebook posts or any social media post. It is also great for brochures and other documents that need to look great but aren’t difficult to make.” Jennifer Warawa, executive vice president, partners, accountants, and alliances at Sage, seconds the nomination for Canva. “I love this app as it allows me to quickly create ‘in the moment’ custom graphics ready for all the main social media platforms, which contribute to social engagement and drives increased ‘sharability.’

Rick Telberg, president of CPA Trendlines Research and Bay Street Group, uses Instagram, where he follows the great museums of the world and a few galleries in New York.

Elizabeth Pittelkow, controller at Litera Microsystems, told us, “I am inspired by an app called DailyArt that gives me access to beautiful paintings from all around the world. It is an art museum at my fingertips. The app provides stories around the paintings and tells me where the physical paintings reside.”

Make your own music with GarageBand where you can play, record, create loops, play multiple instruments, share your songs, play with others, be your own DJ. You can also use ultimate-guitar.com if you are looking for chords for anything in any of the popular genres (just about anything besides classical).

If your creative side is calling, a quick search will unearth online lessons on any art form, from beginner to advanced. And don’t forget you can identify and study music that you hear and art that you see through Shazam and Magnus apps, respectively.

How will technology impact the way we appreciate art in the future? That’s a question that is haunting artists, art aficionados, and museum operators around the world. On the one hand, making art more accessible and using technology to preserve our creations seems very positive. What are the downsides? Imagine a world where our technology creates the art. Is it art, if it’s not created by humans? If it comes out of a machine, do we risk losing sight of our own creative muses? And what does if mean if we stop trying to create?

 

 

 

 

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