Pochade vs Gesture Drawing Timer

**Pochade is free to try with included sample images. Unlock importing your own photos with a single one-time purchase of $9.99. No subscription, no ads, yours forever.** Pochade is a focused reference prep app for painters. Import a photo, study its values, compose your framing, and plan your grid — all before brush hits canvas. No AI generation. No social features. No clutter. Just the reference tools painters actually need, designed for iPad. STUDY VALUES WITH CLARITY The hardest part of painting from a photo is seeing the value structure. Pochade simplifies your reference into 2–9 tonal steps so you can map out your lights and darks before you start mixing paint. A live luminance histogram shows your overall tonal distribution. Select any value bucket to isolate it with a mask overlay, making it easy to see exactly where each tone falls in your composition. COMPOSE YOUR FRAMING Crop non-destructively with preset aspect ratios (1:1, 3:2, 4:3, 5:4) or use the original framing. Your source image is never altered — adjust your composition as many times as you need. OVERLAY A PLANNING GRID Add a customizable grid overlay to plan your drawing transfer. Choose your row and column count (2–12 each), pick a color that reads well against your image, and adjust line thickness. The grid respects your crop, so what you see is what you'll paint. TOGGLE GRAYSCALE Switch to grayscale to strip away color and focus purely on value relationships — the foundation of every strong painting. BUILT FOR HOW PAINTERS WORK Your sessions save automatically as you adjust tools. Come back tomorrow or next week and pick up right where you left off. Undo and redo are built in, up to 50 steps deep. A session library keeps your references organized with thumbnail previews and tool state badges so you can see at a glance what you've done with each image. Zen mode hides all controls so you can evaluate your reference without distraction. Pan, zoom, and rotate to inspect details. BUILT NATIVELY FOR iPAD AND iPHONE Pochade is built natively for iPad and iPhone. Everything runs on-device. Your photos and sessions stay on your iPad, nothing is uploaded anywhere. Privacy Policy: [link] Terms of Use: [link]

A timer, a reference, and a canvas — in one place. Drawing Practice Timer runs the gesture drawing warm-up that artists have done for a century. A reference photo appears, the timer counts down, you draw. When time runs out your drawing saves itself and the next pose appears. No browser tabs. No switching apps. No losing the work afterwards. HOW IT WORKS Pick a subject — figures, faces, hands and feet, animals, still life or environments. Set your interval: 30 seconds for gesture, or up to 10 minutes for longer study. Draw. The app handles the rest. Every pose you draw is saved automatically to your Library. Nothing to remember, nothing to export mid-session. DRAW THE WAY YOU ALREADY DO Apple Pencil or fingertip — both work, and both are first class. The drawing tools are the same ones you already know from Notes: pen, pencil, marker, crayon, watercolour, two erasers, ruler, and full colour control with opacity. Choose your paper: plain, cream, newsprint, watercolour, dot grid or ruled. TWO WAYS TO WORK Side by Side — reference and canvas together, with a drag handle to set the split how you like it. Overlay — draw straight over the reference for value and proportion studies. Or skip the reference entirely and use it as a plain timed sketchpad. STUDY AIDS Greyscale to judge values without colour. Flip to catch your own drawing bias. Blur for the squint test. Grid for placement. Zoom and lock to work into a hand or a face. Aids change what you see, never what you save. YOUR WORK, KEPT Every session is stored on your device. Come back to the Library to review what you drew, resume a session you left halfway, or export anything to Photos. PRIVATE BY DEFAULT No account. No sign-up. No network requests at all. Your drawings never leave your iPad, because there is nowhere for them to go. Built for artists who want to warm up in five minutes and get to work.