I enjoy craft projects of all sorts (drawing, painting, cross stitching, and coloring, to name a few). They're a great way to relax, unwind, and while away an afternoon. Recently, I discovered a computerized paint by numbers game called SegPlayPC. I love it because I can take it with me on my laptop, and it's a very engaging and fascinating hobby. I've been avidly collecting patterns to paint from the huge library that is available from the website, and each set is more beautiful and interesting to paint than the last. And it's really affordable too, which is great for a busy mom.
It's also a good way to spend time with my son, who enjoys the program as much as I do. The program helps to teach art appreciation and composition, so it's a great educational tool. But I mainly love it for its therapeutic and relaxing qualities. The easy patterns only take me a few minutes to do, but some of the more complex ones can take days to finish.
It's very easy to use (even for children) with an intuitive and attractive interface. All you have to do to get started painting is select a color, point, and click to fill in the areas with the selected color. You can zoom in as much as you want so that you can work on small detailed areas, and move the canvas around with your mouse. I have my game customized to my taste, with a custom font and color for the numbers, a custom line color, and adjusted canvas transparency so that a little bit of the original image shows through. There are a bunch of other features available as well (a timer to see if you can beat the clock, a counter to show how many misses you have had, custom canvas and paint textures, etc.).
My current work in progress, a detail of The Last Judgement by Michelangelo.
A closeup view of the area that I'm working on.
A page from my growing collection of patterns.
A new pattern that is ready to paint. I might just do that one next!
And some completed patterns. The detail and quality of the patterns that are available is absolutely stunning.
There's a free online version as well, and a simpler version for handheld devices, but I recommend the full desktop edition for serious painters. The desktop edition offers more patterns to paint (there are thousands available on the website, and more are added every month), more intricate patterns (some of my patterns have nearly five thousand pieces), more options, more customizability, and a full screen canvas to work on. The website offers a free demo of the program so you can try it out and see if you like it. Here's a link to the website: http://www.segmation.com/index.asp.
Enjoy! (I'm off to go paint some more.)
