NY1 highlights the coolest and newest apps for your cell phone or mobile device in the twice-weekly segment “App Wrap.” NY1’s Adam Balkin filed the following report.

ArtRage

There a dozens of phone or iPad type apps for children that mimic drawing, painting and doodling, but "ArtRage" is not one of them. It is designed to be an app that a serious or even professional artist can pick up, with the hopes that they can find at their disposal in the virtual studio just about anything they would find in their real studio.

Virtually every type of drawing tool is available, from crayons to oil paints, and each tool has its own settings to offer every type of effect the actual tool does.

It's also extremely realistic. For example, users painting with oils can layer and mix colors. All the supplies will interact with each other and the canvas, just as they would for real. Speaking of the canvas, even that can be changed to mimic different canvas textures.

A nice touch for seriously inept amateurs is that users can pop an actual photo in the app and paint over it to create an easy masterpiece. The app can even choose the appropriate colors to make it even easier to make.

"ArtRage" is available for the iPad for $6.99.

Art Academy

This is not labeled an "app," but "Art Academy" for the Nintendo DS is a brand new piece of software for the portable device that hopes to teach users how to draw and paint, just like a real-world art class.

A little on-screen art teacher starts with the basics of how to draw lines with pencils. As the user progresses, each lesson builds on the last until eventually users can draw, paint, mix colors and learn some artistic effects like shading and perspective to create masterpieces on the DS's canvas. Developers insists everything users learn in the software can easily be applied to a real canvas.

"Art Academy" for the DS costs about $20.