Apps to help with your Paintings

Below are a handful of free tools to assist you with your paintings. 

Download the apps to your telephone or laptop and use with photos or live phone camera.

From composition, through colour mixing to framing, there is a tool to help.

These are a work-in-progress and feedback is welcome.

Composition Aid

Do you ever need a little help with your composition or perspective? 


Overlay and line up your image using a photo or your live camera to find the composition you need.  Choose from a Grid, da Vinci's Golden Spiral or the Perspective tool. 


Then download your image for reference.

Open Tool

Value & Notan

Do you feel your paintings are a bit 'all over the place', complicated or a bit flat?


With this tool you can strip back to 3 so 5 tones or just greyscale.


This is an invaluable tool to help simplify the tone and structure of your image. 

Open Tool

Paint Mix

Do you ever struggle to mix the colour you want with the paints  on your palette?


Upload the details of the paints you use.  You can have multiple palettes.  Use your phone to capture the colour you want to mix and you will be given the 'recipe' to mix it from your paints.


By saving your mixes you will be able to get the right colour time after time.

Open Tool

Limited Palette Planner

Ever run out of a few paints?  Want to use fewer colours? Or don't want to carry your whole palette on a trip?


Upload your limited palette idea and check you can make all the colours you will need.


Download a chart for reference.

Open Tool

Frame Previewer

Well done, you have finished your painting!  How are you going to display it?


Take a photo of your painting and see what it look like in a number of frames.  With or without mounts or double mounts in the size you choose.  Place it up against a wall colour of your choosing.


This app may give you some ideas.

Open Tool

Paint With Numbers

Here is a bit of fun!  Take or upload a photo, choose your palette or get paint suggestions.


Start with the underpainting and you will see blocks of colour.  Tap on a colour to show you where to put it.  Work through the blocking-in stage, on to the detail.


You can print the numbered guides and colour recipes for reference.  Just decide the size you want.


This is intended as a guide to help your painting progress, rather than a commercial paint-by-numbers kit.

Open Tool