Comparison

HEAVYPAINT Classic vs Pocket Easel

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

HEAVYPAINT Classic

A streamlined painting application focused on pure colors and shapes. It offers essential tools for artists, including improved smudge and blur, layers, masking, and erasing. Ideal for quick sketches, studies, and plein air work.

Highlights
  • Improved Smudge tool
  • Improved Blur tool
  • Layers
  • Masking
  • Clipping
  • Erase tool
Features
Read full description

HEAVYPAINT ClassicA simple yet secretly powerful painting app! Focus on pure colors and shapes with a streamlined interface. Ideal for plein air painting, color notes, sketches and studies. + Improved Smudge + Improved Blur + Layers + Masking + Erase + Clipping 30 day trial with full functionality.

About

Pocket Easel

This app facilitates quick color studies for painting from life, offering a unique palette system that allows color mixing without leaving the canvas. It helps artists maintain color harmony by limiting palettes and provides tools to analyze values and import master palettes.

Highlights
  • Intuitive color mixing gesture
  • Gamut masks for palette harmony
  • Painterly brush textures
  • Value check with grayscale conversion
  • Import master palettes
  • Save and duplicate color studies
  • Export studies with color analysis
Read full description

Pocket Easel is a color-study app for painting from life, wherever you are. It works like a painter's palette: a gamut mask decides which colors are on your palette, and a simple gesture lets you mix as you paint — a little warmer, a little cooler, lighter, darker — without ever leaving the picture. The mask is what's on your palette. The gesture is how you mix. Pick Color Without Leaving the Painting Most apps make you stop, open a color panel and drag sliders to an exact value, then find your place again. In Pocket Easel you push the current color from the corner of the canvas, relative to where it is, the way you'd work a touch more paint into a mix. No numbers to hit, so adjusting often costs nothing. Gamut Masks Before you start, choose a mask shape on the color wheel — a preset, or your own triangle or quad. It limits your palette to colors that belong together, so the whole study stays in harmony. Mixing never steps outside it. Painterly Brushes Round and flat brushes, lines and shapes, all with a subtle painterly texture that varies the color as real paint does. Smudge blends the paint already on the canvas. See Your Values Value Check shows your study in grayscale. While you adjust brightness, a ten-step value scale appears beside the wheel. Master's Palette Import a painting you admire and see where its colors sit on the wheel — then fit a mask to its gamut. Color Studies Every study is saved as you go. Name them, duplicate one to try an idea, and pick up any of them later. Share Your Process Export your study with a frame that shows the gamut wheel and the colors you used, or a time-lapse that shows each stroke and where its color came from on the wheel. Made for Phone and iPad Turn your phone sideways to paint with both hands. Left-Handed mode, Dark mode, and the same tools on iPad. Pocket Easel is built for quick color studies, not detailed illustration — the constraint is the point. All painting tools and image export are free. Pocket Easel Pro, a one-time purchase, lets you turn off the frame, remove the watermark or use your own name, and export time-lapse videos.

Screenshots

HEAVYPAINT Classic4 screens
Pocket Easel3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: Pocket Easel at 100% against HEAVYPAINT Classic's 54%. Pocket Easel also leads on rating (4.9 vs 4.1). HEAVYPAINT Classic's advantage is ratings volume (179 vs 10) and iOS requirement (12.0 vs 17.6). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. HEAVYPAINT Classic sells 2 one-off in-app purchases and Pocket Easel sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Pocket Easel holds the better App Store score, 4.9 against 4.1. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: HEAVYPAINT Classic has 179 ratings behind it against 10, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 54% of HEAVYPAINT Classic's written reviews are positive against 100% of Pocket Easel's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

HEAVYPAINT Classic ships an update every 5 days, Pocket Easel every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and November 10, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences · 6 level
HEAVYPAINT Classic versus Pocket Easel: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterHEAVYPAINT ClassicPocket Easel
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.1 (179 ratings)4.9 (10 ratings) — better
Positive reviews54.5% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings179 — better10
Update frequencyEvery 5 daysEvery 4 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS12.0 — better17.6
Further details — not scored
Size51 MB5 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperHEAVYPOLY, Inc.彬 王

Customer experience

HEAVYPAINT Classic

All ratings179 ratings
Positive77.7%
Neutral3.4%
Negative19.0%
Written reviews101 reviews
Positive54.5%
Neutral13.9%
Negative31.7%

Pocket Easel

All ratings9 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews4 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

HEAVYPAINT Classic

Reported bugs

18 issues
  • App crashes frequently, causing work loss
  • Auto-save feature unreliable despite crashes
  • Canvas flips upside down randomly
  • Transform tool deletes paintings
  • Undo button requires multiple taps
Show 13 more
  • Zoom functionality buggy and destabilizes canvas
  • Canvas resize not working
  • Image corruption with layer duplication
  • Eye dropper functionality haphazard
  • Fill tool doesn't work with selected colors
  • Pressure setting eliminates mark-making
  • Brush size settings change across all tools
  • Some brush textures cannot be changed
  • Random blobs appear on export
  • App crashes when switching between drawings
  • Trial period not clearing for paid users
  • Incompatibility with SE2 and older devices
  • Speaker popping on undo action

Requested features

15 requests
  • Gesture controls (2-finger undo, 3-finger redo)
  • Pressure sensitivity for brush size
  • Lasso tool for moving selections
  • Redo button functionality
  • Canvas zoom capability
Show 10 more
  • Resizable/collapsible UI elements
  • Ability to move canvas with single finger
  • Line work capabilities
  • Better brush texture preset selection
  • Canvas size input field
  • Eraser tool
  • Moveable UI panels
  • Tutorial or onboarding guide
  • Better save/export documentation
  • Pressure control for size on all tools

Pocket Easel

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

2 purchases

HEAVYPAINT Classic

One-time2
  • Seurat Texture Brushes$4.99
  • HEAVYPAINT Pro$9.99
1 purchases

Pocket Easel

One-time1
  • Pocket Easel Pro$5.99

Questions

Is HEAVYPAINT Classic free?
HEAVYPAINT Classic is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Pocket Easel free?
Pocket Easel is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, HEAVYPAINT Classic or Pocket Easel?
Pocket Easel is rated higher. HEAVYPAINT Classic averages 4.1 out of 5 from 179 ratings, while Pocket Easel averages 4.9 from 10 ratings.
Do HEAVYPAINT Classic or Pocket Easel have ads?
Neither HEAVYPAINT Classic nor Pocket Easel shows ads.
Which is updated more often, HEAVYPAINT Classic or Pocket Easel?
HEAVYPAINT Classic ships an update every 5 days, and Pocket Easel every 4 days. Most recently, HEAVYPAINT Classic was updated on November 3, 2026 and Pocket Easel on November 10, 2026.

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