How ArtWorkout Became One of the Best Apps to Draw Together with Friends

Technology has the potential to bring people from all countries and ages together and help them connect in simple, creative ways. Drawing can be a great way to fit into that space because it gives people a relaxed way to share time, communicate ideas, and build something side by side without any pressure.

This has led to multiple collaborative drawing apps surfacing over the past few years, where users can sketch, trace, and draw together with friends in a shared online environment.

ArtWorkout is one of the clearest examples and is one of the best drawing apps based on App Store rankings, offering structured step-by-step lessons that guide people wanting to learn how to draw through applicable lessons that aim not to overwhelm them. But more crucially, the app includes a Multiplayer Mode where people can work on the same image in real-time or through flexible, asynchronous sessions, turning drawing into an easy, collaborative ritual.

What Is a Collaborative Drawing App?

Collaborative creative experiences are attracting growing interest, with an annual market growth rate of over 12%, as people want a digital activity that feels active rather than passive. Shared artistic spaces can offer a clean, accessible way to connect without the intensity that more competitive online environments can offer. Instead, these environments are meant to act as low-stakes reprieves from one's regular day, giving friends, siblings, classmates, and long-distance groups a place to make something at their own pace together.

Collaborative drawing apps also stand apart from solo art tools by turning practice into a collective moment rather than a private task. Participants can either follow the same steps or work on different parts of one shared image, so that the progress and outcome of the final image belong to the group as much as to the individual. This not only helps everyone grow at the speed they feel most comfortable in, while still contributing to a final work, but also makes the drawing experience itself feel supportive and social.

This is the space ArtWorkout moves into, an app offering something that's both structured and social.

Inside ArtWorkout and Its Multiplayer Drawing Technology

ArtWorkout is a learn-to-draw app built to provide structured lessons with the intent of making drawing feel manageable from the first stroke. With over 2,500 step-by-step tutorials available, each lesson breaks an image into clear steps supported by real-time stroke evaluation and a progress bar that tracks completion of the task. The app also supports drawing with pencils on tablets, including the Apple Pencil and other styluses, giving learners a natural, intuitive drawing experience.

This gives learners a sense of movement as they go further along and lets them keep track of their progress, empowering them to make it through to the end.

The app expands this foundation with a Multiplayer Mode that turns those structured lessons into shared experiences. Participants can join group rooms that follow the same drawing steps, but with one canvas for everyone involved, making sure everyone can work and interact together. This cooperative setup aims to create a setting where improvement feels mutual and is built out of encouragement from others.

In this app, people can join both synchronous and asynchronous multiplayer places; in the former, users draw together with friends in real-time rooms where strokes appear instantly across devices, like a live collaborative session; in the latter, a learner can access a recorded session from another user, essentially letting people work together even when schedules differ.

Together, these two formats offer distinct rhythms but support the same sense of connection and shared practice.

Why Collaborative Creative Experiences Are Trending

Apps like ArtWorkout can act as steady catalysts for people who want motivation to build a creative habit but struggle to start on their own.

This is because collaborative drawing has been shown to help spark that momentum by placing the activity in a shared setting that naturally creates a sense of support and community. For example, a 2022 study observed that drawing together among middle school students supported learning in ways that extended beyond the cognitive mechanics of creating visual representations, as the shared activity encouraged social engagement and a collective way of thinking about the material, strengthening how students processed and discussed the lessons at hand.

In this context, an app like ArtWorkout aims to incorporate these dynamics into a digital format that encourages frequent, low-pressure participation, with multiplayer tools that give users the option to draw in real-time with others or complete short collaborative sessions throughout the day.

A New Long-Term Digital Category

ArtWorkout is just one current example of how collaborative drawing apps are carving out a new space in consumer tech, offering structured creativity in a social setting. Supported by more than 75 million users according to the company's internal data, its intent to be more than just a simple learn-to-draw tool reflects the growing interest in digital spaces built around connection rather than isolation.

The app's rise as the #1 learn how to draw app on the App Store's educational charts (supported by more than 450k 5-star reviews worldwide across iOS and Google Play) has also been reinforced by a steady wave of traction on social media apps like Instagram or TikTok, with many clips of people sharing their multiplayer drawings and reacting to each other's sessions circulating widely across platforms.

This direction becomes even clearer when looking at how the app's founder, Aleksandr Ulitin, talks about how he views the platform's purpose.

"ArtWorkout's become a place where people draw together, find friends, communicate, and all communication happens through having a shared goal: to draw a single picture together," he says. He also notes, "I see ArtWorkout as a tool to bring humanity back into people's lives—to bring back interpersonal interaction and communication."

In this wider landscape, collaborative drawing can be an easy, welcoming way for anyone who wants to build a creative routine. One simple way to try it is to download ArtWorkout, complete one guided lesson a day for a week, and see how drawing alongside others adds a different kind of energy to the experience.