Hit the Right Values Every Time

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

We are always searching for useful painting tools which will help plein air painters to learn faster, so when we saw the gray scale made by The Color Wheel Company, we recognized a great product which just needed a little tweaking to make it perfect for the outdoor artist. The features that make this scale so useful are the little windows in each patch of gray scale which allow the painter to sight through the scale to the subject. If the subject area is lighter or darker in value than the swatch, it is immediately apparent. Once the correct value is found, one need only to mix color to match the selected value to be right on the money every time. This scale was extremely helpful in teaching value discrimination to our struggling students during our recent painting workshop in New Mexico. Our simple modifications shown here allow the gray scale to be attached to a painting box so that it can be used hands-free - an important feature when our hands are already occupied painting.