Well, I think I was one of the first people to write about iPhone Art as early as  last year, and I’ve been it, on and off, on my iPhone and posting it at http://www.ArtNewYorkCity.com; plus, my blog ranks well in Search Engines for iPhone Art.

And you can see a lot of great examples of iPhone Art using the Colors application at the Colors Gallery, including some of my own paintings.

First I heard - iHockney: Artist David uses his Apple phone to paint mini masterpieces see below

And then we have iPhone Art Graces Cover of New Yorker Magazine

According to the article:

“… Although he and his wife live in New York, they make frequent trips to Europe. With the iPhone, he can literally paint on the road, he said, sometimes capturing landscapes from the seat of his car.

“I like to have my studio in my pocket,” he told ABCNews.com“

I did several paintings using the iPhone, and lately, not so many, it comes in waves – there are things I like a lot about the iPhone, but I wish the painting applications had more “brushes” and textures than are currently available in any of the programs.   Yet, what is available is amazing.

In fact, I did a Self Portrait

Spent about 2 hours on this painting and lost all sense of time.

on the iPhone last fall – and called it my it my Marshall “Hussein” Sponder portrait since my color was kinda dark – but here’s the whole painting played back for you!

And here’s another of my life drawings using the iPhone.

This was one of my iPhone paintings from several months ago – what’s left out is that you can the animation of the entire painting online – or on the iPhone.    What makes the iPhone different than just another sketchpad that you can create infinite variations of your own paintings.

Personally, I found the iPhone better for quick sketches – spending 5 minutes on a fast life drawing pose gave me more satisfying results, in a way, than spending two hours on one drawing, refining the details, and all – here are several from an Interesting Monday night drawing session

I think the more I try to “finish” these iPhone paintings – the less interesting they become – the fact I could do the painting above in 5 minutes, literally, is amazing – in terms of what I got – and the transparency of the lighting, everything.

I think there’s definately a role for iPhone Art in the Art World now, not sure though, how it actually get displayed and who owns it – what do people buy – the image?  A ScreenSaver?  Or do you use the iPhone Art as a Postcard, and display it that way?

I don’t have the answers, but I do think the iPhone does make the perfect digital sketchpad, and it’ll only get better as time goes on, as the iPhone OS improves, as more memory and powerful processing gets added, more programs will be written, one’s that will essentially make painting on the iPhone, in some cases, better than painting a painting in Oils, or Pastels, or even a pencil sketch.

I’d give this two years from today.