The Future of Drawing

Rooted in Research

The Mental Canvas Story

From Leonardo’s anatomic sketches to Frank Gehry’s conceptual drawings to movie storyboards, drawing is basic to exploring new ideas, communicating new concepts, creating new knowledge, and designing new products.  Unlike text, photography and music, which have been fundamentally transformed by the computer, drawing on a computer today isn’t very different than drawing on paper was during the Renaissance. Mental Canvas was born out of a vision to bring drawing into the digital age. The patented technology behind Mental Canvas was originally developed by a research team at Yale University, where founder Julie Dorsey is the Frederick W. Beinecke Professor of Computer Science. The Mental Canvas platform elevates drawing, making it more than it was on paper and changing our conception of what a drawing can be.