Art Bellies – DIY Pregnancy Art App

Art Bellies is a hard one to pin down.  The overall idea is an art kit that allows you to trace your (or your wife’s) pregnant body’s silhouette and make a painting or picture out of it.  The app does the same thing, but digitally.

It’s a pretty cool idea and a great DIY way to chronicle a pregnancy and is much easier to do than belly casting and black and white “washout” photography, which are more traditional.

Here’s the thing: the app can be used for its intended purpose, of course, but that’s not all it’s good for.  If you can trace a drawing with your finger, you can use Art Bellies to do all kinds of art.

This makes the app into a more universal thing you can make all kinds of cool stuff with.  For instance, pointing the camera at yourself in profile, snapping a photo, and then tracing your profile with your finger creates..  Yep, a cool Alfred Hitchcock-like silhouette drawing.  Go ahead, try it.

You could probably accomplish this kind of stuff with just a photo and some time in your favorite image editor, but it would require a lot more effort.  Art Bellies lets you do it natively and it’s a fun way to create simple art that you can send to your friends or family.

All in all, a pretty cool app whose creators probably had no idea it would be going well beyond its intended niche.