Squirrel: Art Prompts

Squirrel is a calm, woodland studio for creative prompting, feedback and personalised coaching, for artists of any age. GET A PROMPT: Every time you open Squirrel, a new brief is waiting: a subject, a mood, a constraint and a colour palette, woven into one clear idea. Request another whenever you like, or add a twist for an extra challenge. Prefer to steer? Free roam lets you build your own prompt from ingredients, locking the ones you love and rerolling the rest. MAKE SOMETHING: Start the focus timer, from 15 minutes to eight hours, and work in any medium: pencil, paint, pastel, clay, collage, photography or digital. When time's up, share a photo of your piece, or drop in a screenshot. FEEDBACK THAT HELPS YOU GROW: Powered by private, on-device Apple Intelligence, Squirrel looks at your work and checks it against each part of the prompt, then tells you what's working, with real reasons you can see on the page, and gives you ideas to explore and one small next step, broken into simple actions. Choose gentle or candid feedback. Young artists always get encouraging feedback about what's really in their picture, with a fun idea to try next. Feedback is pitched to your age and how experienced you are, so it stretches you just enough. Bramble the fox can deliver your feedback in character, or you can keep it plain. THE WORKSHOP: Over eighty step-by-step skill guides (and growing all the time), from drawing a woodland bunny to realistic eyes, figure proportions, atmospheric perspective and watercolour skies. Each step has its own animated demo and a picture of how your page should look, and the tips change to suit the medium you're using. Submit a picture of your skills work for feedback, and Squirrel suggests guides just beyond where you are now (powered by private, on-device Apple Intelligence). THE BURROW: Everything you make is kept in a cosy underground gallery, each with the prompt and feedback you were given. Ask Barnaby the hedgehog (powered by private, on-device Apple Intelligence) to find "anything blue" or "my pencil pieces from last month", or even "my most positive feedback" and watch the right ones light up. ACORNS AND AVATARS: Earn acorns by making art, finishing your timer and keeping a streak. Spend them dressing up your fox, hedgehog, squirrel, owl, rabbit, frog or toadstool, and unlock prize characters as you go. For safety, acorns can never be bought with real money; they can only be earned by making art. PRIVATE BY DESIGN: No accounts, no adverts and no tracking. Feedback is created by Apple Intelligence on your own device. Your artwork stays on your device and, if you choose, in your own private iCloud, so it's the same on your iPad and Mac. Handoff lets you carry on from one to the other. USE FOR CREATIVE PROMPTING: If you want to build good habits of mindfulness, you can simply use the whimsical, creative prompts to create works of art that unleash your soul. You can choose not to submit your art for feedback if you wish. USE FOR PERSONALISED TUTORING: Using Apple Intelligence, ensuring your images never leave your device, you can benefit from internationally benchmarked art qualification assessment criteria baked into the feedback engine. Designed by a senior Arts teacher with thorough knowledge of learning and assessment, Squirrel is your personal art tutor, helping to move you tin manageable steps to university-level art techniques. Skills lessons are optional, recommended to you by your Squirrel tutor, who assesses your art and chooses focused techniques. Feedback on your artwork needs a device with Apple Intelligence and access to your camera, photo library or files (or just the individual images you choose to share). Prompts, the timer, the Burrow and the Workshop work on any supported device. Improvements and additions to the skills tutorials come to the Workshop in regular future updates, as well as an ever-improving feedback and prompt engine.