PennelloPaint that behaves like paint.

01The engine

Most painting apps draw. Pennello paints.

Under everything is a simulation of paint. A brush carries a load that runs out; its bristles splay, trail and carry the colours they meet. Paint has body, so a knife leaves ridges and a thin wash soaks in. It stays wet, so the next stroke drags through it, and then it dries.

Every point of the canvas knows how much paint is on it, how wet, how glossy, which way the brush went, and its height, roughness and metal: a true PBR material at every point. Light from the painting’s HDRI environment rakes across the ridges and moves when you move.

And it’s exact. A painting is every stroke you made, so it comes out the same, stroke for stroke, on an iPad, a Mac, a phone and a browser, and it can paint itself again, as each one on this page is doing.

02The paint

A whole paint box, and each paint has its own temper.

Oil, acrylic, watercolour, gouache, impasto, glazes, ink, pastel, metallics and more. Not one brush in different costumes: each flows, covers, dries and takes the light its own way.

Watercolour soaks into the paper. Washes laid wet run into each other, heavy pigments settle into the grain, each wash dries with a darker edge, and a damp brush lifts the light back out of the lake.

03Mixing

Blue and yellow make green.

On a screen, blue and yellow light make grey. In a paint box they make green.

Pennello mixes the way pigments do, by how each one absorbs and scatters light. Ultramarine dragged through cadmium yellow turns the green a painter expects, and red worked into white goes the pink it should, never a washed-out one.

04Metallics

Gold that shows the room it hangs in.

Gold, silver, copper and bronze have no colour of their own: they show the light around them.

Every painting hangs in a room, a sunny studio, a workshop, a sunset, and a gilded stroke glints as the light moves across it. Move your mouse over the canvas.

05Dry media

Pencil, charcoal, pastel.

Dry media catch only the tooth of the surface.

A soft pencil breaks up where the paper does, charcoal on its side shades a broad band, and pastel smudges under a finger. Choose linen, hot-press, cold-press, rough or toned pastel paper, and every stroke answers it.

06The brushes

A wall of brushes. Load one with two paints.

Dip one side of a brush in a second paint, as a sign painter does, and a single stroke carries ribbons of both: distinct where you pull it straight, marbled where you turn it.

• Rounds, flats, filberts, fans, riggers, and bristles that move as you paint
• Pens, pencils, charcoal and pastels
• Palette knives, to lay paint thick or scrape it back
• Blenders that soften, mix, smudge, lift and blow
• Brushes of your own, shaped, loaded and saved

07The studio

Masking tape, layers, and the rest of the bench.

Lay tape, paint straight across it, and peel. The edge is crisp, with the small ridge of paint real tape leaves behind.

• Layers with groups, masks of their own and adjustment layers
• Masking fluid, stencils cut, drawn or brought in
• Selections: rectangle, ellipse, lasso, a brush, or one colour
• Move, scale and rotate the paint itself, thickness and all
• Or move the strokes that made it, and they’re painted again where they land
• A reference photo beside the canvas, traced as an underdrawing

08Text

Type a word. Lay it down in paint.

Set type in the built-in fonts or your own, place it with handles, and choose how it meets the canvas.

Stencilled

Paint across the letters and peel: paint only in the shapes, crisp at the edges.

Painted

Each letter filled with strokes that follow its shape, as a sign painter would.

Outlined

One stroke along every outline, tapering or swelling as you set it.

Pressed

Stamped into thick paint, with a ridge round every edge for the light to catch.

It stays text. Change the word, the font or the paint, and it paints itself again.

09Shapes and SVG

Vector shapes, painted for real.

Draw rectangles, ellipses, stars and curves with nodes and handles, or bring in a logo as an SVG, and lay it with a painting’s texture, thickness and light.

• Fill a shape exactly to its edge, brushed or flat
• Run one stroke of any brush along a path
• Gradients mixed from real paints
• Unite, intersect and cut shapes out of each other
• Move a node next week, and it paints itself again

10Into 3D

Frame it. Hang it. Drop it into a game.

The paint has real height, gloss and metal, so a finished painting is already a 3D surface. Turn it in its room and watch the light move across the brushwork.

Choose a frame: plain wood, a stepped classic, a carved and gilded one, a thin float, or wood behind glass, with a mat if you like. Then export the framed painting as a glTF or OBJ model at its real size, with colour, height, normal, roughness and metallic maps, for Blender, Unity, Unreal, a game, or a gallery of its own.

The flat ways out too: a picture, a PDF at print size, an SVG of your shapes and strokes, a timelapse, and the painting file itself, open and documented.

11For the web

A hero that paints itself, on any website.

Export a painting as a web embed: a few lines of HTML that paint it, stroke by stroke, on your visitor’s own device, with the light following their pointer.

It isn’t a video. It’s the strokes, so it’s small, sharp on any screen, and alive: the hero of a landing page in place of a stock photo or a looping clip, in one shape for desktops and another for phones.

You scrolled past one on the way in.