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A painting app with nothing to sell your child

Open the App Store and search for a coloring app. Most of what comes back is free to install and then quietly expensive: a handful of pictures unlocked, the rest behind a weekly subscription; an advertising SDK that follows a four-year-old around; a “premium” button placed exactly where small fingers land. Parents are asked to take a privacy policy on trust, and there is rarely a way to check.

Lurush was built for one child first, and then for every family who cannot justify another monthly payment. Every picture, every brush and every feature is available the moment it is installed. There is no premium tier, because there is no tier. There is no advertising SDK, no analytics, and no account to create. Paintings are saved on the device and nowhere else — put the iPad in Airplane Mode and nothing changes, because nothing ever needed a connection.

What you can do with Lurush

Made for Apple Pencil

Lurush uses Apple’s own ink engine rather than a home-made drawing canvas, which means the feel of it is the same as every first-party drawing app on the iPad.

• Pressure changes the thickness of every brush — press harder, get a fatter line.
• Tilt widens and softens the pencil and crayon, the way laying a real one over does.
• Palm rejection is handled by the system, so a hand resting on the screen never draws.
• Pencil-only mode ignores fingers entirely, for children who lean on the iPad.
• Undo is stroke-accurate and unlimited.

How it works

1. Pick something to paint. A blank page, one of the thirty-six pictures, a photo, or a coloring sheet you brought in yourself. Big buttons, no menus, nothing to read.
2. Mix a colour, or take one. Tap the rainbow button and squeeze paints into the well until you get the green you wanted. Keep the good ones — they stay in your paint box between sessions.
3. Paint. Fill a shape with one tap, or scribble it in with a brush. Colour stops at the lines either way, so a two-year-old and a nine-year-old get the same tidy result.
4. Save it, print it, or send it to Grandma. Finished pictures go into My Art on the device. The share button offers AirPrint, and blank sheets can be printed for children who would rather use real crayons.

Requirements

Why it is free

Lurush started because a child wanted to paint on an iPad and every good option wanted a monthly payment. Plenty of families cannot spare that, and a child should not be able to tell which ones from the app they are handed.

So there is no premium version, no locked pictures, and no way to spend money inside the app. If your family enjoys it and you would like to put something towards more coloring sheets being drawn, there is a link below — but it unlocks nothing, because there is nothing to unlock, and the app never mentions it to children.

Goes to the person who makes Lurush. Not a registered charity — just one developer paying for the hours it takes to draw more pictures.

Built by Oxin Studio

Lurush is made by Oxin Studio Inc., an independent software studio focused on private, well-crafted apps. We think software for children should be judged by what it does not do as much as by what it does: no advertising, no data collection, no manufactured urgency, and no bill arriving every month. Lurush is our answer to what a painting app for a four-year-old ought to be.

Common questions

Does paint really stay inside the lines?

Yes, and it is worth explaining how, because it is not a tidy-up afterwards. When a child touches a picture, Lurush works out which shape their finger landed in and clips everything they draw to that shape. The colour is not checked against the border — it cannot be drawn past it. Scribble across the whole rocket and the paint stops at the edge every single time.

Blue and yellow make green? Doesn’t a screen mix light?

It does, and that is the problem. Mix blue and yellow light and you get grey, which every child would recognise as wrong. So Lurush mixes in pigment space instead — the way a paint set behaves — and converts to screen colour afterwards. Red and yellow make orange, red and blue make purple, all three make mud, white gives you tints and black gives you shades. Exactly what happens on a real palette.

Can we use our own coloring pages?

Yes. Add a printable PDF, a picture from your photos, or take a photo of a page from a coloring book. Lurush reduces it to outlines and colour still stops at them. If a photographed page comes out grey, a clean-up slider sharpens the lines. Sheets are stored on the device only and are never uploaded. Adding one sits behind a parental gate, and please only add pictures you have the right to use — many characters you will find online are copyrighted by their owners.

Is it really free, with nothing to buy later?

Really free. No in-app purchases, no subscription, no locked pictures, no advertising, and no “premium” anything. There is nothing in the app that costs money, and no code in it capable of charging you. Support is entirely optional and lives on this website, not in the app.

Is it safe for young children?

Rated 4+, with no ads, no in-app purchases, no links out of the app, no chat, no accounts and no data collection whatsoever. Nothing a child taps can take them out of the app or spend money. Importing a coloring sheet — the one action that opens your photos — sits behind a parental gate.

Does it need an internet connection?

Never. Everything runs on the device — the pictures, the brushes, the colour mixing, the sounds. Airplane mode, a car, a plane, a cabin with no signal: it behaves identically.

Do we need an Apple Pencil?

No — fingers work perfectly well, and toddlers tend to prefer them. If you do have a Pencil, pressure and tilt both work, palm rejection is handled by the system, and there is a Pencil-only mode that ignores fingers entirely for children who lean on the screen.

Can we print the pictures?

Yes, both ways round. Any finished painting can be printed or shared through AirPrint, and blank coloring sheets can be printed with their numbers for children who would rather use real crayons at the kitchen table.

Where are our paintings stored?

In the app’s private storage on your device, and nowhere else. They are not backed up to a server, because there is no server. Deleting the app deletes them, so save anything precious to your photos first.

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