French Girls – Let an Artist Turn Your Selfie into a Portrait (or a Joke)!

The estimated reading time for this post is 4 minutes

If you’re looking for a fun, free app to while away a summer day, look no further than French Girls. This app gives you humor, art, an opportunity to show off your talents, and, perhaps, even a new Gravatar.

With the French Girls app, you take a self-portrait (“selfie”), then complete strangers will get to work transforming your selfie into a work of art. These anonymous artists may provide you with a stunning sketch or, well, make good fun.

The choice isn’t necessarily yours.

You don’t have to be either French or a girl to enjoy this app. French Girls is named as a tribute to Jack Dawson, the character in Titanic played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who sketched French women in Paris prior to boarding the ill-fated vessel. French Girls gives you the opportunity to be drawn and draw others, as if you were Jack Dawson or one of his French girls.

Taking Your Selfie

Take your selfie using the app (after you give permission for the app access to your camera).  You can’t use existing photos on your phone, the photo has to be taken within the app using the front-facing camera.

If you don’t like the photo, you can try again and again until you’re satisfied. There are no editing tools in the app to make your smile whiter, eyes brighter or skin smoother. Your selfie will be you, all you.

Once you’re happy with the photo, you tap the check mark ✔︎ to submit it to the app. Your photo will be added to the queue for users to select as the subject for their artwork. If you enable Notifications, you’ll receive an alert when an artist has created a drawing of you.

Getting Your Drawing

When you get your drawing you can double tap it to save it as a favorite, if you like it. If you really like it you can share it with others via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, email or text message. You can also save it to your Photos app.

If you don’t like it, you can trash it.

You As the Artist

French Girls doesn’t just give you a personal portrait, it also gives you the opportunity to show off your artistic skills. And/or your sense of humor.

You can select others’ selfies to draw and contribute to the app. You’re given a pallet of colors and an undo button. If your drawing gets enough favorite votes it may even appear in the gallery!

Get to work.

Gallery of Artwork

The app has a gallery of paired selfies and artwork to inspire and entertain you. You can double-tap ones you find particularly appealing to save them as your favorites.

You can scan through the portraits to see the most popular ones. This “Best Of” collection contains both amazing artistry and laugh-out-loud funny pictures. Creativity comes in many forms.

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Humor

Some of the humor is intentional, some isn’t. Some selfies seem to invite humor, either from the poses or from written messages included in the photos. Let’s just say a requirement of the app should be the ability to laugh at yourself.

If you’re highly sensitive to being the butt of jokes, you may want to hold back on submitting your selfie. But you can still enjoy the gallery of inspiring and hilarious portraits.

Some of the humor is edgy. This isn’t an app for children.

My Test

I tested this app both by submitting a selfie and drawing a portrait. My portrait was submitted soon after I downloaded the app:

Apparently I am no one’s muse because my selfie has not been selected by an artist. Perhaps I should use some humor?

Speaking of humor, I tried drawing a portrait from a selfie. I wasn’t trying to be humorous, but let’s just say my artistic skills haven’t progressed since my time in Mrs. Beaujean’s kindergarten class. My artistic skills may have even regressed since then…

Second Try

In desperation, I decided to submit a selfie of my beloved pooch Astro. His birthday was earlier this week and what better present than a hand-drawn selfie of him?

Astro proved to be much more inspirational than I was because within a few minutes he was rewarded with a hand-drawn portrait, courtesy of artist rebmcd92:

Availability

French Girls is available for free for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch.

If you don’t have an iOS device, you can see the gallery of most popular portraits at the French Girls app website and visit the French Girls Facebook Page. You can also request an invitation for the Android version of the app.

Paid Upgrades

The app is free but if you really get into the app or want to support the developers, you can purchase in-app upgrades of more artistic tools, such as additional colors, and special effects.

You’ll have plenty of opportunity to enjoy the app without paying any money.

Your Thoughts

What do you think of French Girls? Would you be brave enough to submit your selfie to the app? Would you be brave enough to try creating a drawing? Did you find any fun portraits in the gallery? Let us know in the Comments section below!

If you’d like to share your French Girls portrait or artwork with us, please email me at [email protected]. I’ll add them to The Wonder of Tech Facebook page to share them. (I reserve the right to keep it clean.)