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Learn to paint with the Artist's Helper

The Artist's Helper is an application that can help you learn to paint.

…that is learn traditional painting - with real paint, oils or acrylics or whatnot, not digital painting.

A digital helper for physical art.

Painting is simple. Just put the right colours in the right places.

Any questions?

Ok. There may be a little more to it than that. But this is the 21st century and we have the tools.

• Give it a photo of your subject and it will help you adjust, analyse and simplify it. It will help you break the image into areas of similar colour for an initial block-in stage.
  Create a paint-by-numbers style outline for you to trace or transfer.
  …but then you need the paints…
• Give it a photo of the paints on your palette and it will help you mix the colours you need.
  Tools for acurate colour mixing. That's the clever bit.
• Give it a photo of your work-in-progress and it will give suggestions for what to do next.
Iterate and improve your painting. That's the clever bit too.

An old phone on a selfie stick captures both my work-in-progress
and the glass palette where I mix my paints.

And it's free!

It doesn't exactly teach you to paint but it has tools which will help you to learn.

It's rather more than paint-by-numbers.

The raison d'être for this application was a helper for me to learn to understand the nature of colour and how to mix paints.
I just wanted to be able to mix paints to match the colours from my reference images but it has since grown into a whole suite of tools.

Reference image…	help from the Artist's Helper…	final painting

Why is painting difficult in the first place? meh, skip this bit.

Until the student has become the master

Once we are comfortable with various tasks, say we'd rather draw our own sketch or choose our own colours, then we can do those bits on our own. With each new painting we can take on more of the responsibilities ourselves until we don't need it anymore.

The goal of this application is its own redundancy.

Computers aren't always trying to take our jobs. Sometimes they want us to have theirs.

The Artist's Helper is all about learning to paint by copying reference images. The program's focus is on understanding the colours in an image, breaking the image down into areas of similar colour, value or hue, understanding how colours relate to each other and learning to mix paints to match them.

It's not cheating - it's a tool for learning. If you have problems with that then don't bother reading any further.

For if you cannot paint what you see you will find your self handicapped in trying to paint what you imagine. Harold Speed

The Artist's Helper helps artists with the craft of their painting but it can't help painters with their art.

It can help with the how not not the what or the why.

In the same way violinist plays his scales, so as to acquire the capacity of producing pure tones on his instrument and training is ear to appreciate accurately the intervals between the different notes, so the painter trains his eye to perceive accurately the appearances on his retina, and trains his hand to express accurately these perceptions. Not that playing scales is music, or training the eye is art; but because without this training we have no control of the means by which artistic things are done. Harold Speed

How do you learn a sport? You do drills. A Language? Conjugate endless verbs. A musical instrument? Scales. All the misery of repetition, the horror of sitting here in this hall with these zombies suddenly seems worth it. Dan Harris, 10% Happier (it makes more sense in context).

Origins you can skip this bit too.

Gallery

Hello, I am Bob. Delighted to make your acquaintance.

I'm not really a painter but I painted these (using little or no natural talent) with the aid of the Artist's Helper and I learned a lot on the way.

my wife Moya in a teddy bear hoodie
the proof of concept painting

Moya skiing in Tignes
monochrome is easier

Kyan
my nephew

Laika - u/adriD2
from r/redditgetsdrawn

@alexandramactavish & Felicity

@alexandramactavish & Sugar Rush

Oakley - u/justynebean

Julie

Jeff

Eric

Greytcurls

u/yacaughtme

u/rubythebean

u/t1nykat

u/MediocreIndependent

u/fallout42

Myriah

Blue

Abel

If you follow the same processes there is no reason why your paintings shouldn't be as just good or better. I had a lot of fun making these and I have learnt a lot in the process.

The learning is the key. I believe that whilst producing these paintings I have picked up quite a few artist's skills. †

† An artist who has picked up some skills
is not the same thing as a skilled pick-up artist.
Shame.

About natural talent meh, skip this bit

When I say using little or no natural talent I am not saying I do not have any natural talent, only that I did not use any. I simply followed the Artist's Helper 's processes and advice as rigorously as possible.

Just for comparison this is how awesomely talented I was without any help.

From a paint and wine party a couple of years ago

It's supposed to be a boat.

It is awful, isn't it?  😒 I didn't even have any wine.

Largely irrelevant but my drawing wasn't bad when I was (a lot) younger. Unfortunately I have not kept any old drawings I can show you though. But I was ok. Honest. These old scribbles are not really what I'm talking about.

Skills, not talents

Actually there's no such thing as natural talent. Not when it comes to painting. There is only understanding and practice.

What's more practice is somewhat over rated. When someone really understands a skill they can be pretty good even if they haven't actually done it before.

It is rare for anyone to study something practical without actually trying it as they go. Their attempts gradually get better and the practice gets the credit. But it is the study and the understanding which actaully makes them better.

Some physical coordination is required, which certainly benefits from practice, but it's a lesser consideration.

With trail and error the errors prompt research, but it is the solutions that cause the improvements not the mistakes.

Conversely, when practice is thoughtless repetition without understanding it is a waste of time.

Colour mixing

I found colour mixing difficult. So I wrote a program to help me understand colour and work out paint recipes.

And thus the Artist's Helper was conceived.

We can select a target colour from the reference image. Then we need to tell the program what paint colours we have available as mixing ingredients. One way to do this is to load a photograph of samples spread out on a palette.

There are colour correction facilities for different cameras and lighting conditions. Of course  🙄

The program displays our target colour and our ingredient paints in an interactive colour-space-widget. This shows us what ingredients to combine to make a trial mixture. Mixing lines are drawn to show what the various ratios of ingredient paints will give.

The screenshot above I wanted to mix a skin tone of Deep Peach sampled from my reference photo. To get the right hue it shows I can mix my Permanent Yellow Light and my Pyrrol Red Deep to make mix 1: Spanish Orange. I can then lighten this with my Titanium White to give mix2: Desert Sand which is very close to my sampled target.

We can photograph and load the trial mixes to find how close we are and what to add to get closer still.

Rinse and repeat until the our mix matches the target colour.

In the example this is as close as I can possibly get with the paints I have available. I'd need to buy a more saturated pale orange to get closer but at least I now know not to waste any effort trying!

More details can be found in tutorial 1 part 4.

A sketch

We need a sketch as a scaffold from which we can hang our paint.

I could already draw, kinda, so the Artist's Helper was not written to teach drawing. It is mostly for learning about colour. So let's just trace the reference.

We can, of course, draw our own sketch freehand. Later on, when we want to compare photos of the work in progress to the reference, we can use transformation tools to morph one image onto the other.

But an accurate drawing is an accurate drawing. Once you know what you're doing the only difference between accurately drawing from life and tracing a reference photo is just how long it takes.

Unless you think shutting one eye and holding your pencil at arms length to judge proportions looks cool.
I find sticking out my tongue helps too.

If you want to make changes to the scene to emphasise or exaggerate an aspect it is as easy to do when tracing as when drawing.

Picking out suitable lines to trace is not easy in some photos. Scaling and printing it to the right size can be tricky too.

Lenna
Lenna sketch

I incorporated some code to produce a sketch from a raster image.

If we enter the size of our canvas our helper will scale it and print it over multiple sheets. Each sheet will have overlaps at the edges and markers to help line them up accurately.

Paint-by-numbers / rotoscope style outlines are also included later.

Details on creating, printing and transfering a sketch can be found in tutorial 1 part 3.

Colour breakdown

Seeing the colours in a scene is more difficult than it sounds (see colour judgement above). Judging the relative values of different colours, that is their lightness or darkness can be even harder.

Is that bright blue sky really darker than those sun lit white buildings? It can be, yes. What about when the sky becomes grey and overcast? Then, counter intuitively, the sky lightens and the buildings darken. What about when the storm rolls in? Then both the sky and the buildings darken so it's anyones guess. Measure it.

We can decide which colours we want to use by manually picking them from the subject, having the helper automatically choose some for us or loading them from a photo of the paints or colours that we have available (useful when we can't so easily modify our available colours such as for mosaics, embroidery etc.) .

Once we have a trial set of colours it would be nice to see what a picture would look like using only these. We can add more colours to refine the picture further or disable some to simplify it.

The program has controls to define colour distance tolerances etc.

2 colours (Nōtan)

3 colours
7 colours
15 colours

Some artists like to paint in a similar way to how this sequence progresses. They block in areas of simple colours first to cover the whole canvas. Then they refine it in an iterative fashion gradually increasing the level of detail.

Others like to fully render each area as they spread out across the canvas. They do not return to previously covered areas so much. (Like the Laika the pitbul in the screenshot at the top of the page).

Yet others like to produce a monochrome underpainting first to ensure they have the drawing right before worrying about colour. The Artist's Helper can help with that too.

5 value greyscale
5 value burnt umber tone string

I have switched back and forth between different methods and I'm still undecided as to which camp I am in.

Details on creating a virtual palette can be found in tutorial 1 part 2.

Outlines

As we now have a pop-art style block-in of colours it might be handy to have a outline map/cartoon of them.

These 'paint-by-numbers' maps can be transfered to the canvas along with, or instead of, the sketch.

That was great for me at the start when I was busy learning about the technicalities of paint. Now I prefer to transfer only the sketch to the canvas but then create an image which overlays the outlines over the sketch to create a map from which I can paint more freely.

The outlines get very complex but pre-filtering the subject image can remove a lot of noise.

5 colours
complex outlines
smoothed
simplified
printed and taped for tracing

The little blue rectangles show where I have sampled colours from the subject image.

No, not the masking tape. The other little blue rectangles.

Filters

Whilst I was writing filters for smoothing and simplifying I added some others for brightness, saturation, contrast, sharpness, hallucinogens etc.

You would normally want do all the filtering before colour sampling/breakdown/tracing etc. (Obv). But I didn't know that then.

original

brightness x 2.0

brightness x 0.5

saturation x 0.0

saturation x 2.0

Although it it possible to over-do these things…

Too much everything

Much too much everything

But is this art now?
No. No it is not. I am no Francoise Nielly.  😬

Although I do wish I'd have played with the filters like this before I did the painting. I might have incorporated the nice blue to green to yellow to orange to gold in the walls and ceiling in the one before last. I think it looks cool.

Comparisons

Once the painting is in progress it is hard to see where we may be going wrong. What needs more work and what we should leave well alone? So I wrote something to compare photos of our work-in-progress to the reference image.

The program provides markers on the virtual canvas that can be transfered onto the real painting. When a photo of the canvas is loaded into the application these can be used to line it up exactly. The photo is stretched and skewed so it matches the original even if the photo was wonky.

I am in the process of writing more code to do the colour comparisons even when the painting is from a freehand drawing. It warps the one image to match the other before the comparison is done. (It will take time so don't hold your breath).

Several metrics are available and can be displayed in different ways.

It may not be immediately obvious how to read and use these but it soon becomes clear when you get in the swing of it. It is much more self-evident when it's your project and you can see the changes as you paint and take more photos.

Further detailed comparison information is shown about a specific spot as we move the mouse pointer over the images.

With most of these we are aiming to change the painting until the comparison images are completely blank.

Original photo: Oakley

The painting in progress

DeltaE: the colour shown indicates the colour distance between the subject image and a photo of the canvas.

Baseline: show areas whose colour difference is over a value specified with a slider control

Luma: highlight the differences in colour values.

Saturation: highlight the differences in saturation

Hue: it looks bad but large differences don't matter at low saturations.
Not a very useful measure but it is included for completeness. Somebody might need it one day.

HueAndSaturation: hue differences scaled by the saturation
Much more useful. We are looking pretty good here.

Difference: the same as the difference blending mode in GnuIMP.
May not be very useful?

Glaze: the colour of the glaze that would get the canvas closer to the subject.
Colour difference extended and exaggerated by a slider value. Pay particular attention to colours that aren't simply an exaggerated version of the subject, eg. the blue behind the nose.

These shots make my painting look bad but, for illustrative purposes, the gain levels have been cranked up to their maximums.

Besides, these show the painting still work-in-progress, not the final differences.

Though, to be fair, I didn't do a lot more other than sign it.  😉

Perhaps I should add examples from some paintings with specific problems. Later.

The comparisons can be misleading in areas where there is a lot of complex details or texture. Slight misalignment can show as a large colour difference. For example, this can be seen these images in the branches of the tree. Since this painting was completed I have written some more code for controls to allow some tolerance here (but it still needs more work).

The white areas near the top are because the subject photo didn't fill the whole virtual canvas. I wanted to get a nice composition and also had to account for the possibility of a frame.

It goes on and on. There's lots more already in the program and still plenty more to be added.

Who is the Artist's Helper aimed at?

It's aimed mostly at me, …but it has value for:

The absolute beginner who wants to paint but doesn't know where to start

… and who already knows how to draw or isn't too proud to trace.

Learn how to paint with the assurance of a satisfactory outcome for your endeavours.

With this software there is no need for dozens of time wasting, trial and error attempts which will probably be immediately discarded before you create your first worthwhile painting.

Wasting time on trial and error leads to frustration and disappointment.

Those first embarrassing efforts, floundering in the dark, can dent confidence and derail enthusiasm.

Practice versus guidance

We are often told that the only way to learn to paint is to practice, practice, practice. But practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. If we practice at doing it wrong we will get very good at doing it wrong. Habituated. We need guidance.

Learning from mistakes is extremely inefficient.

Guidance from the Artist's Helper can save us years of grinding. It cannot make us into artists but it can help us become good painters.

Nearly all great artists were good painters first.

And not just help us become good painters. Many of these techniques will work with mosaics, tapestries and embroidery too.

However, it will only help us learn to create works from reference images.

One step at a time. Once we can paint well from reference images then we can think about painting the dragons of our imagination.

[Sir Joshua Reynolds] could not even draw a hand, except as an object of sight. James Northcote

Further tools for constructive drawing and painting are in the works.

We will soon be able to paint a decent picture without needing any of that old natural born talent rubbish.

Which is good because I have found natural born talent hard to come by these days.

The more experienced painter who wishes to understand the nature of colour

The colour visualisation tool can help achieve an understanding of the dimensions of colour. It can answer questions like why can a mix of blue and yellow look green? or why do mixtures of complementary colours produce greys?.

colour-space: blue plus yellow

Eminent colour scientists have used the application in their lectures.

• Dr David Briggs, president of the Colour Society of Australia uses Artist's Helper as a visual in his lectures.
  
  Colorimetry
  ICD2023-1: "Controlling Colour: Historical Background" with Dr David Briggs (NAS/UTS)
  Design Institute of Australia webinar "The Elements of Colour", May 18, 2023
  AIC2022 presentation: Psychophysical Colour
• The artist and color theory educator color.nerd has used Artist's Helper to explain colour mixing on his tiktok feed.
  
  Visualizing pigment mixing curves!
  Whether skin tones are called "warm" or "cool" seems totally arbitrary...
  He's also known as @art.pete.repeat on instagram.
  
  Colour science and Youthforia's pitch-black skin foundation

The scholar who wishes to study the palettes of existing paintings

Drag an image of a painting into the colour chart to see the colours used in a three dimensional space which we can rotate, tilt and zoom.

Some seemingly colourful paintings have a surprisingly limited gamut. Ostensively vivid colours can insteadbe clever illusions using simultaneous contrast.

Some paintings have fluorescent colours which just cannot be achieved with standard paints.

But now at least I know and I won't get sad attempting the impossible.

Johannes Vermeer - Girl with a Pearl Earring - 1665 Francoise Nielly - UNTITLED 594 - 2011

The tutorial The very quiet call to action

So, now you know what it is, you should read the tutorial.

If you end up downloading and using the application then dropping me an email would be very much appreciated.

The Artist's Helper 's helpers

The Artist's Helper 's name is subject
to change if anyone's got a better idea.

… and the domain name is available.

I'd like to develop this into a proper product, maybe via a kickstarter campaign. The prototype is up-and-running but I need some help with testing it and especially help to sanitise and flesh out the tutorial.

I need Artist's Helper 's helpers.

I am looking for two or three pioneer guinea pigs who want to learn how to paint and who are amenable to help me test the software.

A guinea pig painter
(He isn't mine, he's from youtube).

No artistic talent is required. Indeed it might be better if you don't have any to start with. But you must have boundless patience. Good communications skills will also help.

In addition to paints and stuff, you would need access to a computer, a camera and a printer.

The software will be full of bugs at first, which will be irritating, but you would have the complete attention of the developer, which will make a nice change, and you would have a green light to complain.

I also want pictures of *your* paintings to be included in the tutorials and galleries.

If you're interested email me: Bob.

Re the computer requirements. The program was written on a MacBook and has been fired up once or twice on a Windows 10 laptop but not really tested. It should run under any recentish Windows or Linux OS with a recentish java installation but I have not worked out the details. There may be extra issues, reconfiguring hotkeys etc. but it should be do-able.

This sounds interesting. It's like a way to play without having pressure to necessarily create something complete from nothing, which, when learning a new medium, is sometimes the hardest part. u/CinderQuill22 via r/learnart
(about tracing but applicable to the whole thing)

Application changes

If anyone has anything they'd like added just let me know.

Here are some changes I'm contemplating that I'd like some opinions on

Layer name changes. Some are confusing. It's difficult to write about paints in the tutorial when it might mean a layer, some physical paints, some palette entries. Also some layers have the same initial so the hotkeys are odd.

• paints -> preview or rendering
• subject -> filtered
• original -> unfiltered or reference (or possibly subject -> reference)
• canvas -> work or work-in-progress

Remove the Load named colours and Load cube palette… sub-menus and supply some palette properties files for them instead.

more to be added...

Website changes

I'm clearly neither a copywriter nor a graphic designer so if anyone has specific changes to the website they'd like to see then I'm all ears.

On the other hand I don't completely hate it at present so not every suggestion will be implemented.

I'd particularly like suggestions for cutting down on the verbosity without losing any anything helpful.

I think I'd like to stick to the informal personal (amateur) feel rather than attempt a slick corporate professional style. I couldn't pull it off anyway.

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