As I get more serious about my studies, I find that I need more visual tools to aid me in my learning. To that end, I asked my husband to help me make these two tools (in help I mean that I just gave him the idea and he did all the work).
The first one I found the design on the youtube channel drawpaintmix. It is a paint checker to compare your color to the object you are painting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JY-AZ48wMQ
Everyone has this--or should. It is a great tool to help train the eye. I haven't seen much trouble with lighting impact, even if I use it on the screen for something I can not print. We spent $0 dollars to make this as we had everything at hand--including a piece of wood that just so happened to be the right size. The window to look through is just cut out from cardboard. :)
But the one on the right is something I have yet to see, and that is a shame. I call it a color-wheel spinner. Or random generator. I want to practice with different color schemes and train my eye to find what color schemes are used by those better than me, and I thought it would be really cool to make a little spinner with detachable spinner thingies for the different schemes. Again, I just gave my husband the idea and showed him the scheme shapes and he went to work. He is GREAT at DIY on so many levels. While I haven't used it to paint yet, I have used it to start practicing seeing schemes--and it works super well! This was super easy to make, too.
I printed out a color wheel that I liked. There are tons of them, so take your pick. Hubby taped it to the cardboard piece we had lying around (glue would just make it wavy and weird). Then hubby careful measured out and cut out the shapes so that they would hit the correct points. That was probably the hardest part, really. He had to do the Split Complimentary a couple of times to get it to line up right. After that, we "drilled" a hole in the center of each (well some were almost center because of the shape--direct center would have thrown it off). I can't explain the tool that my husband used. I guess it is literally a hand drill. The tip is pointed and you rotate it in your hands like you are trying to make fire. It cut through the poster board well without bending or denting the paper. I asked hubby to mark the center of the spinner so that I could line it up easily. He then cut a toothpick in half and voila! Instant spinner.
I am using these tools constantly to help me see color more easily--whether in digital form or in life. After I finish my traditional room study, I plan to do a watercolor test using this cool little toy :)
Really, you can make these tools any way that you want. For the color checker, I have seen people just use cardboard cut-outs, or clips or whatever. As for the spinner---well, play with it! Maybe you can find a better way to make it :)
