ArtSpark
A free iPhone app that builds one art prompt a day from five spinning crayons. Keep what you like, re-spin the rest, and any medium counts toward the streak.
Nearly half of American adults make art in some form. Almost none of them made something today, and what stops them is usually the blank page. ArtSpark is a free iPhone app that hands you one prompt a day, short enough to start on: "Make a dreamy digital piece of polka dots, using cool tones."
Five crayons spin into one sentence you can start on
The home screen is a stack of crayons: medium, subject, detail, colors, vibe. Each lands on a short value and the sentence underneath rewrites itself to match. Keep the ones you like and re-spin the rest one at a time, or hit Spin All. Long-press a crayon and its whole list opens with Surprise me on top. One Undo steps back from a spin you regret.
The crayons know some art. Colors only lands on the palettes you marked as favorites. Detail draws from 20 to 30 options per subject and won't repeat any of your last ten. Vibe checks the medium and the subject, so nobody gets asked for a cartoony oil painting or a realistic pattern, and with difficulty set to Kids, Moody and Dramatic never come up. Pick photography and the sentence changes verb: "Shoot a moody photograph of..."
Challenge mode adds a sixth crayon that pushes back
Turn challenge mode on and a purple crayon joins the stack with a constraint, like finishing the piece in 15 minutes. Leave a color scheme out of your favorites and one of the challenges is to use it. Longer runs live on their own tab: Sketch-a-Day is a week of pencil sketching, and Watercolor Week is seven days of exercises that start from basic washes.
A missed day doesn't break the streak
Streaks count only the days you asked for prompts, so a weekends-only schedule never breaks on a Tuesday. One missed prompt day in any seven is forgiven. Making something without photographing it still counts: "I Made It — Log Without Photo" ticks the streak and keeps the gallery for pieces you shot. Photographed work collects there with notes and tags, and the App Store listing says those photos are never shared with AI or third parties.
The reference photos under a prompt are real photography, never AI-generated. When the medium is photography they hide, since a professional photo of the exact subject would be the answer key, and paintings of the subject from Wikimedia show instead.
- Price
- Free
- Runs on
- iPhone, iOS 15.1 or later
- Current version
- 2.2.2, August 20, 2026
- App Store categories
- Lifestyle, Education
- Look
- Risograph print in primary colors, set in Young Serif and Bricolage Grotesque
The prompt and the streak stay free
ArtSpark is for artists who want a daily nudge and for people who have always said they aren't artistic and want somewhere to start. Free is a conviction here, not a trial period. A paid tier built around working artists, with courses and feedback on your pieces, has been floated and is untested. It gets built only if people using the app ask for it.
Want to talk about ArtSpark?
Get in touch →coachhouse.so/artspark