Inkwash, a watercolor sketching app and explanation
Details
- External ID
- 48523534
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Inkwash, a watercolor sketching app and explanation
- Website domain
- github.io
- Launched
- June 14, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 250
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.9713114754098361
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
I've made a drawing app based on my physical sketching practice, using fluid sim and some shader tricks to mimic watercolor-style ink washes. Best used on iPad or with a drawing tablet. The linked article shows how the core engine works, with plenty of little interactive demos. It was fun to make, sharing in hopes others find it fun too :)
Enrichment
- Theme
- graphic design assets and utilities
- Vertical
- Media & entertainment
- Function
- Content generation
- Audience
- B2C
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- watercolor sketching app
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Partial Building a standard canvas sketching app is vibe-codeable, but realistic watercolor fluid dynamics requires custom GPU shaders and Navier-Stokes simulation.
What it would actually take: The core architecture is built around WebGL/WebGPU and custom GLSL/WGSL fragment and compute shaders that simulate the 2D Navier-Stokes fluid equations, pigment diffusion, evaporation, and paper fiber absorption. The hard parts are tuning the fluid grid simulation to run smoothly at 60+ FPS on mobile devices like iPads and implementing realistic Kubelka-Munk pigment mixing models. This requires specialized expertise in computer graphics, GPU programming, and numerical fluid physics.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Rebelle, Expressii, GIMP, Inkscape
Concerns raised: Unrealistic vortex patterns compared to actual watercolor dynamics, High GPU usage (50-75%) even when not actively drawing, Lacks vector/editable stroke history to adjust effects after creation
Feature requests: PWA support (installable app on tablets/desktop with manifest and service worker), Replay/export feature to show stroke process and wash spreading, Editable vector format to dial vortices up or down after creation, Design water flow as adjustable field underneath strokes, Pause/play buttons on demo canvases to reduce idle GPU consumption
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 136 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #4 of 137 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 228 days after the earliest competitor.
- Creative Canvas: Draw & Paint · ph · 2026-09-14 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.60
- Creative Canvas · ph · 2026-09-25 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.59
- Animated Drawing | Animate Art | Doodle · ph · 2026-09-28 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- Mix Painter · ph · 2026-09-23 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- Creative Canvas: Sketch. Paint. Create · ph · 2026-09-17 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- InkFlow · ph · 2026-09-24 · 3 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- Doodle It - Scratch Art Paper · ph · 2026-09-24 · 3 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- HUD-like live annotation and sketching app for macOS · hn · 2025-10-29 · 56 upvotes · similarity 0.47
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a content generation tool for Government yet.