Nintendo has been teaching art, painting, and drawing techniques with their Art Academy games for nearly five years now! But they’ve all been regulated to just their hand-held touch screen systems like the DS and 3DS. There’s even one that teaches you how to draw Pokemon! But now you can enjoy learning art from the comfort of your own home with Art Academy: Home Studio, a downloadable title for Wii U.

Art Academy uses the touch screen on the Wii U gamepad to teach you how to draw and paint. Granted, it will never replace the tactile sensation of pressing a paintbrush to an actual canvas, but it’s pretty good for what it is. Home Studio has plenty of lessons to guide you through the different techniques and tools. Beginner lessons include instructions on how to draw still life like a tomato, apple, lilies, strawberries, and eggs, as well as landscapes and seascapes. Advanced classes include drawing animals and people. There are also bonus side-lessons you can unlock. Finally are lessons that teach you about the different art tools you’ll use, like pencils, pastels, colored pencils, charcoal, and paints.

In these lessons, you’ll learn about art, drawing and coloring techniques, and even about different famous artists and pieces of well-known artworks. You can look up all these in a glossary. You can also paint anything you want in Free Paint mode, using all the tools at your disposal. Then you can record your drawing steps and post them on Miiverse or even YouTube! Or you can just save your art in a portfolio and show them off in an in-game gallery.

The Art Academy games are great educational titles and I wish they got more attention among Nintendo’s other titles. If you enjoy art and drawing, or just want to learn more about it, I’d highly recommend this or any of the other Art Academy games.

Kid Factor:

This is definitely a great educational title for kids, but reading skill is a must for all the text. Kids (and even adults) will learn a lot about art from the lessons. Parental supervision is recommended for the online features, but Nintendo is pretty good about keeping things safe on Miiverse. Art Academy: Home Studio is rated E for Everyone.

I’d like to also dedicate this review to my grandmother, who passed away about two years ago. When she was alive, she enjoyed painting and was a great artist. She even won awards and painted the mural for the back wall of her church, and later on she even taught art lessons to kids in her town. When I was a kid and would visit her, she even taught me a few art lessons. Any kind of artistic ability I have, I’m sure I inherited it from her. I don’t know if she would’ve played the Art Academy games on the DS and 3DS, since the screen is so small. And I’m not sure she would be into the Pokemon Art Academy game, but I bet if she were teaching art now, and a kid wanted to learn how to draw Pokemon, she’d be happy to teach him or her. But I bet she would like the Wii U version because of the bigger screen. In fact, if she were still alive today, I would bring my Wii U console to her house so she could see it. And that’s saying a lot since I don’t like to take my consoles out of the house much. Hopefully she can watch me play it while she’s up in Heaven. Every time I play the Art Academy games I think of her.

Tags: Game Reviews