Alchemy lets you draw using your voice, in the dark, more

Whilst most drawing applications seek to provide users with as many possible ways to edit and draw accurately as possible, Alchemy doesn’t.

The Java-based application seeks to give users ‘a way to explore and experiment with alternative ways of drawing‘. This ranges from using your mouse to draw to using your voice!

My below-par attempt at drawing something interesting in Alchemy

‘Modules’ allow for many features to be added (or disabled). Some of these include: –

• Use your voice to control the width of a line or the form of a shape.
• Draw ‘blind’; Turn off the canvas display and explore what shapes emerge from the ‘darkness’.
• Create random shapes. Generate shapes that can be used as a starting point for characters, spaceships, or whatever shape you see in the ‘clouds’.
• Mirror draw. Draw mirrored symmetrical forms in real time.
• Randomise. Mess up and distort shapes.

You won’t find undo, section selection, editing options or even paintbucket in Alchemy. Interaction instead focuses “on the output of a great number of good, bad, strange and beautiful shapes.”


General features consist of: –

• Record a drawing ‘session’: Automatically save the contents of the canvas to a page in a PDF file at set intervals.
• Auto-clear the canvas: Start drawing on a clean slate at set intervals. Force yourself to start over fresh.
• Switch the canvas: Automatically open your sketch in a more ‘conventional’ drawing application, either as a bitmap or vector file.
• Avoid distraction: Alchemy has a very minimal interface, just a simple toolbar that disappears magically, and a fullscreen mode to block everything else out.