Linesong
Audubon's American White Pelican, its dots joined and its picture come in.

Every line sings

Dot to dot through the great natural history plates. Join the dots with a thread, hear each one, and watch the plate come in around what you have drawn.

Coming soon to the App Store · iPhone and iPad

John James Audubon, American White Pelican, Plate 311 of The Birds of America, 1836. Its 24 dots are the app's own.

How it goes

  • Touch the first dot and draw to the next. A thread follows your finger, and every dot plays a note.
  • When an outline closes, that part of the picture comes in from the plate: a wing, a beak, a petal.
  • When the drawing is finished, its lines can be strummed like strings, and its name is said aloud.
  • Then the page draws back to the whole printed sheet the figure was cut from, and a card tells you what it is, who drew it, when, and where the original is kept.

From the plates of the naturalists

More than 400 drawings in 32 packs, gathered into five volumes: the wide world, the world beneath the water, the small world, the world unseen and the world in bloom. Every picture is in the public domain or openly licensed, and each one says who made it and where it is kept.

Radiolarians from the Challenger Report, drawn by Ernst Haeckel. Glass Lanterns Ernst Haeckel and Adolf Giltsch, the Challenger Report, 1887. Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.
Flowers painted by Pierre-Joseph Redouté. Redouté's Garden Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Choix des plus belles fleurs, 1827–1833. Missouri Botanical Garden.
Shells from Conchologia Iconica, drawn on stone by G. B. Sowerby II. Sowerby's Sea Shells Lovell Reeve and G. B. Sowerby II, Conchologia Iconica, 1843–1878. Smithsonian Libraries.
Birds from John Gould's Birds of Asia. Birds of Asia John Gould, lithographed by Henry Constantine Richter, 1850–1883.

Made to be calm

  • No timers, no scores, no streaks and no reminders.
  • Three ways to draw: Easy, the outline alone; Medium, every dot numbered; and Hard, hundreds of dots to find with the drawing zoomed in.
  • The sound of each place plays quietly behind its plates. The notes, the names and that sound each have a level of their own.
  • Not everyone cares to meet a spider. Spiders, or all the creepy crawlies, can be left out.
  • In English, German, Japanese and Chinese.

What it costs

Free
The whole of the first pack, and the first drawing of every other pack.
A volume
Bought once and kept, with every pack added to it later.
The Library
Every volume and every pack, and everything added later.

No subscription, no adverts and no account.