This project is mostly completed but a roadmap exists and may receive new features.

Overview

A desktop app for timed drawing practice, built around your own tagged library of reference images.

Sites like Line of Action and Quickposes are great until you want to practice from your references. Gesturtle imports your images into a local library, lets you tag and filter them however you like, and turns any part of that library into a study session.

Download: itch.io or GitHub Releases

Tech Stack: Java 21, JavaFX, SQLite

Roadmap:

• Board Imports: Paste a Pinterest board link and pull in every pin, with each pin's link as its credit. Other reference sites are candidates too

Links:

• itch.io
• Example Library

View more about the project on its showcase page.

Features

Practice

• Timed Sessions: From 30 seconds to untimed, with breaks or click-to-advance between images
• Segments: Chain several into one session, like 5 × 30s, then 3 × 2min, then 1 × 10min
• Ramping Timers: Times that grow across a segment, say from 30 seconds to 5 minutes
• Memory Drawing: Study the image, draw it hidden, then compare
• Study Aids: Flip, rotate, zoom, grayscale, blur, grid, invert, brightness and contrast, and a 2 to 4 tone value study, without touching the original
• Review: Star or tag the keepers after each session
• Presets: Start a session from the Home page in one click, and resume interrupted ones

Library

• Import: Drag and drop files, folders, or images from a browser, or paste them. Duplicates are caught by content
• Tags: Hierarchical (animal / bird), with colors, descriptions, and group-only or pick-one tags
• Filters: And, Or, and Exclude, saved as reusable views that practice can draw from
• Gallery: Square or masonry cards, plus a list view, all resizable
• Playlists: Hand-picked sets, with bulk tagging, favoriting, and removal
• Image Details: Favorites, credit, notes, seen counts, and a "not seen in N days" filter
• Portable: The library is one self-contained folder, so you can back it up, sync it, or keep it in git

Usage

On first launch, pick (or create) a folder for your library, then:

1. Import a few images or a whole folder and add tags.
2. View them in the Gallery.
3. Hit Start practice on a Home preset, or build a session on the Practice page.

To try it without your own images, download the example library and open it through Settings › Backup › Import archive…

Keeping it in git

The library folder can be a git repo. Gesturtle writes a .gitignore that tracks images/ and meta/ and leaves out the database, thumbnails, and exports, so practicing never leaves anything to commit.

Pull and push whenever you like. Edits to different images, tags, or views are edits to different files, so they merge on their own. Changing the same thing on two machines gives an ordinary git conflict, and Gesturtle picks the file back up once you fix it.

Showcase

Setup

To run this locally, you need JDK 21 and Maven.

git clone https://github.com/hutnerr/gesturtle.git && cd gesturtle
mvn javafx:run

The sound effects aren't in the repo because their license doesn't allow redistributing the files, so a build from source runs silently. To hear them, get the free "UI SFX Vol.1 - Lite" pack and copy its "Minimal" sounds into src/main/resources/sounds/ as minimal-click.wav, minimal-confirm.wav, minimal-cancel.wav, minimal-error.wav, and minimal-success.wav.

To build a native app bundle or run the tests:

./jpackage.sh            # runnable app folder in dist/
./jpackage.sh deb        # or rpm, dmg, pkg, msi, exe for your platform
mvn test

License & Credits

The project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. The license covers the code, but not the Gesturtle name and logo (forks are welcome under their own name and icon) or the third-party assets below, which keep their own licenses.

• "UI SFX Vol.1 - Lite" by inaruna3565 - Royalty-free, may be shipped inside the app but not redistributed as files
• Gruvbox by Pavel Pertsev - MIT
• Inter by Rasmus Andersson - SIL Open Font License
• Icons from SVG Repo, Lucide (ISC), Material Icons by Google (Apache 2.0), and 16pxls by Paul Mackenzie (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Screenshot artwork and the example library are public domain works by Degas, Seurat, Sargent, Hokusai, Hiroshige, Audubon, and others, from the open access collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Art Institute of Chicago (CC0)

Support

If you found this project helpful or enjoyable, and want to support future work, you can buy me a coffee on Ko-fi