Learn to Draw in VR with ‘Pencil!’
The blank page can be a stressful place, especially if you’re working on your drawing skills. Luckily, there’s Pencil! — a new app that uses passthrough mode on Meta Quest to teach you how to become a better artist whether you’re just starting out or looking for something more advanced. And it’s available now on the Meta Horizon Store for $12.99 USD.
Pencil! puts a digital overlay of virtual lines on physical paper for you to follow with your pencil. It’s like tracing, but it goes much further than that. Pencil! uses this basic idea to create an entire curriculum ranging from drawing simple shapes to filling, shading, drawing from observation, and perspective. Your guide on your artistic journey is Leo, a little Leonardo da Vinci-inspired teacher that sits on your desk and walks you through each step with and without the lines to guide you.
The idea is not only to let you draw a nice picture by copying something else — though you can certainly do that. Instead, the aim is to give VR-assisted artists the skills they need to go out and draw on their own. Since Pencil!’s Early Access release in 2024, Developer Lead Head Studios worked with art teachers across the US to refine their lessons and watch how real students interact with the app. In addition to the guided lessons, there’s also an extensive free-draw mode that lets artists create still life scenes with adjustable camera angles, lighting, and poseable figurines.
We caught up with Stephen Rogers from Lead Head Studios to talk a little more about how Pencil! came to be.
Stephen Rogers: Certainly! Some backstory: The year before the Meta NYC Hackathon, I actually joined a different Meta Hackathon at the Menlo Park campus with my now good friend Gabriel Williams. Together with a couple of teammates, we created a game called Submersed,and we ended up winning first place. We explored taking the concept further but decided to focus on our own individual projects for the time being.
After about a year, I was thinking about what I wanted to work on at the next hackathon. At the time, I was interested in getting better at drawing and didn’t really know where to start, so I came up with a pitch for Pencil! and sent it to Gabe to see if he was interested in joining up again. As a surprise to me, his co-founder at Polysketch, Bill Ramsour, had already reached out to him with a very similar idea. So when the Hackathon came around, Bill, Gabe, myself, and another friend, Ian MacKenzie, signed up as the Pencil! team.
Over three days, we worked on the concept and got pretty far — having made a single lesson about drawing an apple and a simplified version of our current “Free-Draw” mode. Pretty soon into the process, we were really seeing a lot of potential in the idea, but I think it became quite evident when almost every other team at the hackathon came over to line up and give the app a shot.
When we won the hackathon and knew this could become something, we shared our trailer on social media, and that blew up over night. We had a lot of coverage, including 80.lv, UploadVR, and more, which was really exciting! We decided to use this momentum and created a Discord server where people could sign up to try the demo. In under a week, we had over 1,000 members, and it’s been growing ever since.
SR: From the very beginning, we knew we didn’t want to be just a “tracing” app, but instead a full art course teaching all the fundamentals of drawing. For myself, I wanted an app that would motivate me to continue drawing, even after taking off the headset. So it was important not only to figure out ways to make the app fun and engaging, but to also transfer the skills and make you feel like you were truly getting better.
To start off with, we worked on our lesson format and tested a bunch of different options, some being very educational and others being more “follow along” type drawings. After many iterations, we think we found a good balance between learning and having fun. We eventually added more modes and features, such as the expanded “Free-Draw” mode, where you create your own still-life scenes. We found that people who already knew how to draw really loved this mode as it helped solidify their view on perspective and gave them a creative studio of props that aren’t easily accessible.
Our newest addition, “Academy,” is the next step in turning the app into an art curriculum. In this mode, you follow a campaign of 50+ lessons where you unlock new content and challenges to progress through your art learning journey. At the end of each lesson, you can snap a picture of your drawing to keep track of the progress you’ve made along the way. We’re excited to see people dive in and share their creations with us!
SR: Leo is great, isn’t he? He’s our app’s mascot and a friendly face to help guide you throughout the app. He sits at the edge of your paper and gives you tips and encouragement while you draw. He shares a name with one of the world’s most famous artists, Leonardo da Vinci, and just like him, Leo is knowledgeable on all the techniques you need to become a master artist.
SR: Oh, for sure! It’s always a hard balance between making something too informative / educational and making it fun / engaging. But the fact that the app uses passthrough mode makes that job so much easier. It gives us the ability to show people what things look like in 3D and gives us the real estate to present as much (or little) information to the user as we need, since we aren’t confined by your typical flat screen. We think this is the perfect medium for education apps like ours and believe it’s a more intuitive and personal way to learn a skill.
SR: Working with schools was a welcome challenge that we weren’t expecting. It’s been great to see students of all ages take the first step in learning to draw, and for many of them, it’s their first time in a VR headset. Because of that, we’ve been very conscious of our UI and UX as we aim to make the app as intuitive and user-friendly as possible. All parts of the app are accessible via hand tracking, and we’ve spent a good amount of time working on onboarding users and having something for all skill levels to interact with. We’ve also worked with teachers to help form our curriculum and ensure we’re teaching the concepts that they think are valuable. It’s been a delight to see a room full of kids all be super proud of the drawings they’ve made thanks to Pencil!
SR: Absolutely. Many of our users are self-proclaimed “bad drawers,” and they’re often amazed by what they’ve created. Many end up sharing their artwork with family and friends, and our personal favorites are the drawings that end up on the fridge for all to see. We love it when people share their artwork they’ve made in the app, and we even have a place to showcase our users’ art called “Drawings of the Week.” When people feel proud enough to share their art, that makes us feel like we’ve done our job well. That’s our main mission: to demystify the drawing process and show that anyone can be a great artist.
SR: We hope to be updating and improving upon Pencil! for years to come. We have a whole list of new lessons that we’d love to cover, including some potential brand collaborations that are in the works. Over the next few months, you can expect some free and paid content in the form of lesson packs. We also plan on adding a few new features and modes for making artwork easier, and we’re excited to share more news of that when the time is ready.
