There’s a few really great art apps for VR already, like Tilt Brush, Kingspray, and Gravity Sketch, but few focus solely on painting on virtual canvas. Now Painting VR, a painting simulator that lets you mix and use fresh paint while creating on realistic canvases, is officially out of is Early Access period on App Lab, coming to the Meta Quest Store for Quest and Steam for PC VR headsets.

Update (April 15th, 2022): Painting VR arrived on the official Meta Quest Store for both Quest and Quest 2, and to Steam for all SteamVR headsets for the first time. Priced at $20, the app lets you mix colors, dip your brush in and start painting.

Check out the new release trailer below to see Painting VR in action, replete with finger painting. The original article detailing its launch on App Lab follows below:

Original Article (May 11th, 2021): Developer Oisoi.studio bills Painting VR as an app that’s “very hands-on, easy to understand, and aimed at all ages.”

“Play around and feel the relaxing satisfaction of putting unlimited amounts of fresh paint on a huge canvas,” Oisoi, says. “Teach yourself the basics of colors, the painting process and composition. Sharpen your skills by experimenting with the tools and techniques at hand, and become part of a new wave of digital artists. All without having to bother about cleaning up afterward.”

Check out the trailer below to see Painting VR in action:

Painting VR is available via Oculus App Lab for Quest, and is priced at $10.

Painting VR is planned to stay in early access on App Lab for “about a year,” the studio says, with updates coming every trimester.

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The studio says its second update will add more creation tools, whilst the third update will focus on “connecting with the world and other users.” A fourth update will introduce the ability to add new environments and tools through the game’s upcoming market place.

The art app is currently only available for Quest and Quest 2, however the studio says it’s considering a port for other VR platforms as well.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Christopher John Greenwell

    Painting VR is a really fun app but if you are really looking for Bob Ross level , I would have to say https://vermillion-vr.com/ will be right up your alley :)

    • Ender772

      but is that even available?

      • Hivemind9000

        You couldn’t be bothered to follow the link through to their home page? The steam and quest links are right there… (it was released in July 2021, Very Positive rating on Steam).

      • Mr.Philgood

        yes, it’s on the oculus store

    • Vondelger

      Has anyone ever actually painted with Vermillion?

      • Foreign Devil

        yes. The color mixing realism is top notch!

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    • Yeah, from everything I’ve seen, Vermillion looks like the way to go if painting if VR is your thing. It actually looks really good.

  • Kevin White

    Hmm. Here’s my take: a) it looks kind of fun, b) being able to zoom in to ludicrous proportions and collaborate with others is cool, and c) their paint materials / thicknesses look nicely calibrated… but for me the true majesty of “painting” (and other graphical design types) in VR specifically is the ability to instantly and intuitively move beyond the flat plane into the third dimension. This jumped out at me very early on in April 2016 in Tilt Brush.

    Otherwise, for 2D painting I’m usually content to either paint in real life or use my XP-Pen Artist Pro 15.6 and Krita.

    • Painkiller

      But the “I-rather-do-this-in-real-life-than-in-VR” approach can be used to almost any VR simulator. The thing about painting in VR is being able to erase anything at any time, choose any color you want very easily, have access to different tools, etc.. of course its not something to replace the real thing, it is just that, a simulator.

      • Kevin White

        Understood. It’s just that VR DOES bring an element to art that you CAN’T do in real life — painting in the air across three dimensions.

        And I know not everyone owns an art pen / tablet for 2D painting (where you can erase anything, use any color, use any of dozens of brushes, use layers, effects, etc).

        Like I said, this looks fun but at the same time it also kind of feels like playing a videogame on a flat monitor that happens to be situated in a VR environment.

        • Adrian Meredith

          What this need is the ability to paint real world places e.g. imagine painting the ceiling of the cistine chapel. That’s not something you get to do in real life

          • Kevin White

            True, that would be very cool. :o)

        • NotMikeD

          I hear what you’re saying. I firmly believe there’s a crowd that sees an activity in VR like this as an opportunity to build a skill that could be applicable in the real world without the means to actually DO it in the real world. Sort of like table tennis, and maybe to a lesser extent mini-golf, these activities map so well to VR that a person could play some of these games/apps extensively and then if they were to attend a real-life sip & paint or something, they’d be able to “do some damage” and impress, and if people then ask how long they’ve been painting, it’s like, “no this is my first time.” :}

  • Ender772

    looks gorgeous

  • I’d get this if it came to steam or the oculus store.

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    • Cless

      Apparently it did come to steam :D

  • Silithas

    shame it’s only on quest. Rather not use that privacy invading hardware.

  • Richard R Garabedian

    I think this app has updated nicely over the last year. Its paint mixing is now just as good as vermillion as far as i can tell