Visual training for miniature painters

Train your eye.
Paint better minis.

Most miniature painting advice is about the brush. Painter’s Eye trains the part that comes first: seeing what is actually in front of you — how light a value really is, where the light is coming from, why a model reads flat — in exercises that take a couple of minutes.

Get in touch

In development. No sign-up, nothing to buy.

Which is lighter?

Pair 1 of 6

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This exercise needs working vision, and we would rather say that than invent a version of it that measures something else.

What it trains

Six tracks of ten levels, planned across the whole curriculum. Two of them exist today — the rest are written up but not built, and the app says so rather than pretending otherwise.

Value

In the app

Telling light from dark, and keeping that judgment when color, size and surround try to talk you out of it. Ten levels, from a first pair of grays to diagnosing why a finished model reads flat.

Light & Form

Partly in the app

Where the light is coming from, which planes face it, and where a highlight belongs on a form. Four of the ten planned levels are in the app today.

Color

Coming soon

Hue relationships, chroma and relative temperature — the judgments behind mixing a color on purpose rather than by luck.

Materials

Coming soon

The cues that make a surface read as metal, leather, cloth or skin, and the reflection structure underneath them.

Composition

Coming soon

Focal structure, big shapes, silhouette and where the eye travels on a finished miniature.

Diagnosis

Coming soon

The integrative one: look at a model, find what is actually wrong, and decide what to fix first.

How a lesson works

Two to five minutes. You predict, then you find out, then you get the reason — in that order, because the reason only sticks once you have committed to an answer.

  1. See it

    A short, concrete idea with a figure that shows it — not a lecture. One or two sentences, then you are doing something.

  2. Try it

    You commit to an answer before anything is revealed. Guessing is allowed; the guess is what makes the reveal land.

  3. Own it

    The scaffolding falls away, the stimulus varies, and the same judgment comes back later, spaced out, to see whether it stuck.

No pressure, and no one right style

Smooth blending is not automatically good. Grimdark is not bad. More contrast is not always better. Painter’s Eye teaches you to see the difference and choose on purpose — it does not grade your taste.

  • No hearts, no energy, no streak you can lose by missing a day.
  • No timer, unless timing is the thing being measured — and it is not.
  • A wrong answer is information about what to practise next, not a penalty.
  • Finishing a lesson is celebrated whatever your accuracy was.
  • Everything runs on your phone; training never waits for a network.

Coming to iPhone first

It is being built for iPhone first, then Android, then the web. There is no release date and nothing to pre-order; when there is something to try, this page will say so. If you want to know when that is, send me a note below.

Get in touch

Questions, a feature you want, something that looks wrong, or you would like to help test it on a real painting desk — this reaches me directly and I read everything.

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