Comparison

HEAVYPAINT 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

This app offers a raw digital painting experience with unique tools for creating textured art and quick studies. It's designed for artists who embrace digital chaos and seek a streamlined, mobile art studio.

Highlights
  • Unique digital brushes
  • Color Jitter for texture
  • Fast color blocking tools
  • Line Blend for gradients
  • Liquify tool
  • Minimalist interface
  • Gallery for creations
Features
Read full description

Raw digital painting with unique brushes & color chaos. The painter's painting app that celebrates digital chaos. HEAVYPAINT is unapologetically digital and a bit unhinged. It’s a celebration of digital impressionism. Whether you're sketching on the train, painting outdoors, or creating quick color studies, this is your pocket art studio. Unique Digital Tools Color Jitter: Unleash beautiful digital chaos and texture Fan Fill and Lasso Fill for fast color blockins, textured foliage, notan, organic shapes. Rake tool for softening up edges in a graphic way Line Blend for instant gradients
Liquify to adjust proportions and shapes Built for Speed & Mobility Perfect pochade box replacement for pleinair painting. Great for quick paintings on public transit, many will finger paint on their phones. Streamlined interface.Focus on pure color and shape without digital clutter. Streamlined Experience Minimalist interface puts painting first Customizable tools that adapt to your style Strong shape design tools for bold, crisp artwork Gallery to review and organize your creations + Plein air painters who want to ditch heavy supplies + Quick color studies and concept sketches + Figure painting and gesture drawing + Artists wanting to rediscover digital painting joy + Anyone seeking a uniquely digital aesthetic HEAVYPAINT balances professional capabilities with unhinged creativity. Embrace procedural randomness / crunchiness / glitchiness that digital enables. Touch grass. Ideal for pleinair painting and quick studies This app is subject to Apple's standard EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Pocket Easel

This app allows artists to conduct color studies and practice painting from life on their mobile devices. It features a unique color mixing system that keeps you within a harmonious palette and offers painterly brushes for a realistic feel. Save, duplicate, and share your studies with process details.

Highlights
  • Intuitive color mixing without leaving the canvas
  • Gamut masks to maintain color harmony
  • Painterly brushes with subtle texture
  • Value check with a ten-step scale
  • Import master palettes for analysis
  • Save, duplicate, and name color studies
  • Export studies with process details or time-lapses
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

HEAVYPAINT4 screens
Pocket Easel3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Pocket Easel at 4.9 against HEAVYPAINT's 4.0. Pocket Easel also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 58%) and update cadence (every 5 days vs every 5 weeks). HEAVYPAINT's advantage is ratings volume (66 vs 10) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.6). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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 sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month 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 4.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: HEAVYPAINT has 66 ratings behind it against 10, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 58% of HEAVYPAINT's written reviews are positive against 100% of Pocket Easel's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

HEAVYPAINT ships an update every 5 weeks, Pocket Easel every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on November 12, 2026 and November 13, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard5 real differences · 5 level
HEAVYPAINT versus Pocket Easel: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterHEAVYPAINTPocket Easel
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.0 (66 ratings)4.9 (10 ratings) — better
Positive reviews57.7% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings66 — better10
Update frequencyEvery 5 weeksEvery 5 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.0 — better17.6
Further details — not scored
Size37 MB5 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperHEAVYPOLY, Inc.彬 王

Customer experience

HEAVYPAINT

All ratings66 ratings
Positive68.2%
Neutral13.6%
Negative18.2%
Written reviews78 reviews
Positive57.7%
Neutral15.4%
Negative26.9%

Pocket Easel

All ratings10 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews5 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

HEAVYPAINT

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Gallery crashes
  • Artwork files not saving properly
  • Eyedropper tool not working as expected

Requested features

3 requests
  • Improved layer management
  • More customization options
  • Better color controls and eyedropper tool

Pocket Easel

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

3 purchases

HEAVYPAINT

Subscriptions2
  • Gallery Sync Monthly7 Days trial$2.991 Month
  • Gallery Sync Yearly$19.991 Year
One-time1
  • Unlock Full Version$9.99
1 purchases

Pocket Easel

One-time1
  • Pocket Easel Pro$5.99

Questions

Is HEAVYPAINT free?
HEAVYPAINT 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 or Pocket Easel?
Pocket Easel is rated higher. HEAVYPAINT averages 4.0 out of 5 from 66 ratings, while Pocket Easel averages 4.9 from 10 ratings.
Do HEAVYPAINT or Pocket Easel have ads?
Neither HEAVYPAINT nor Pocket Easel shows ads.
Which is updated more often, HEAVYPAINT or Pocket Easel?
HEAVYPAINT ships an update every 5 weeks, and Pocket Easel every 5 days. Most recently, HEAVYPAINT was updated on November 12, 2026 and Pocket Easel on November 13, 2026.

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