Art Academy

You'll grow in confidence as you progress through the lessons, with Vince talking you through colour blending, tints and shades, more advanced techniques and even throwing in a bit of simple art history. After each lesson where every part of the process is explained in detail, you unlock a "mini-lesson" where you're pretty much left to your own devices, as Vince shows you - and this is important - his interpretation of the subject in question, before briefly touching upon the techniques he used to paint it. Crucially, there's no right or wrong way of doing things - just your way.

Those who regularly visit the DSiWare store will be aware that Art Academy has essentially been released before, in two parts: First and Second Semester, each costing 800 points (about £7.20). In truth, your extra £5.59 doesn't get you much more besides a cartridge, a box and some instructions, but there are a few more mini-lessons to work your way through and an image library with pictures in a number of different categories - landscapes, fruit, marine animals - for inspiration.

Annoyingly, it also loses a significant feature of the DSiWare titles. In those, you could save images to the internal memory, which could then be copied to an SD card, ready to print out, and yielding surprisingly good results with a decent inkjet and a piece of A4. Viewing them in a gallery on the small screen just isn't the same.

Those with an older DS model may feel even more short-changed as they miss out on some DSi-exclusive features. Chief among these is the ability to take photos which can be used as subjects. You can import images already in the DSi memory (though not from an SD card), then choose to view them through various filters which highlight outlines, areas of light and shadow or blocks of colour; again, this helps beginners to learn the process of building an image up piece by piece.

Oddly enough, it's the smaller DSi rather than the XL which seems to be the best choice for budding Picassos. The larger screen of the newer model theoretically gives more room for manoeuvre, but with no increase in resolution, it's sometimes frustratingly tricky to get fine detail to look right.

Though it's more a problem with the hardware than the software, it's only fair to observe that Art Academy isn't particularly well-suited to an intricate approach. Perfectionist tendencies have to be ignored in favour of something a little more impressionistic, while portraiture should only be attempted by the extremely patient. Pencil drawings tend to fare better, though you're always more likely to create a Monet than a Dürer.

Colour mixing can also be a little finicky; while you can move a pin around your reference image to pick out a particular hue, you then have to blend paint until it reaches the right point on the colour wheel, rather than selecting it from the wheel itself. It's clearly intended to get players used to the art of blending tones, but a shortcut for those without the time to prod paint tubes repeatedly until the right colour is found would have been welcome. And, inevitably, it's simply not as rewarding as the real thing. It's undeniably cheaper than a full set of oils and expensive paper, and significantly less messy, but the results are never going to look as good.

However, Art Academy's potential to encourage latent talent or simply inspire a new hobby shouldn't go unnoticed. Limited by the medium it may be, but if it ignites a creative spark in just one fledgling artist then the thought and effort that's evidently gone into this surprisingly accomplished little package will have been worth it.