BrushLens by Soren Ulsig · for oil painters
Tap any spot in your reference and get the recipe from the tubes you own, like 40% Yellow Ochre + 40% Titanium White + 20% Alizarin Crimson. Then read the values, the temperature and your drawing the same way.
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Or $59/year · or $199 lifetime
Your photos never leave your device
Why paintings go wrong before the first stroke
A camera flattens values, shifts temperature and hands you a color you still have to mix. Most of the scraping off happens because of what the reference never told you.
Here's why your portraits look flat
Squinting only gets you so far. Values groups the reference into 2 to 10 real steps, so the big light and dark shapes are settled before color gets a vote.
You start with a value plan, not a guess.
The number 1 mistake painters make
Fifteen separate mixes across one cheek never hang together, because none of them came from the same place. A base mix does what you do at the palette: one pile, pushed.
Skin reads as skin, not as a patchwork.
What actually makes it feel real?
Shadows are usually cooler than you expect, and the strongest color often sits in the halftone, not the light. BrushLens shows you both before you commit paint to them.
You spend your strongest color where it counts.
From scraping off failed passages to starting every painting with a plan.
Eight tools, in the order you paint
01
Reduce everything to a 2- or 3-value pattern with live ratio readouts. If your notan doesn't read, your painting won't either. Check it here before committing hours on canvas.
02
Group your reference into 2 to 10 value steps. See the big shapes immediately, in grayscale, umber, or full color. This is what most painters skip and then struggle with.
03
Plan your composition with common canvas ratios and composition guides (Rule of Thirds, Golden Ratio, Diagonals). Find the strongest crop before you start drawing.
04
Tap any spot and get an actual mixing recipe from your palette - like "40% Yellow Ochre + 40% Titanium White + 20% Alizarin Crimson" with a match score. Lock a base mix and every reading after it comes back as your base plus what you add, the way you really work from one pile of paint. Hold for a precision loupe, or switch to Value Map mode and plot up to 10 points on a value scale.
05
See the warm and cool zones mapped across your reference, with breakdowns showing the temperature balance in your lights, mids, and shadows. Get concrete advice on canvas toning and color strategy.
06
See exactly where your reference is most and least saturated. Isolate mode keeps only the high-chroma areas in color - so you stop over-saturating shadows and know where to spend your strongest color notes.
07 New
Tap the darkest point of a form, tap the lightest - and see exactly how chroma travels through the passage, with a gold marker at the peak and a mixing recipe for it. The light doesn't just get lighter. It gets quieter.
08 New
Point your camera at your painting and your reference ghosts over it, live. Flip on Difference mode and your mistakes literally light up while everything correct goes dark. It's your teacher's feedback loop - without the teacher. Check, don't trace.
Base mixes
You mix a skin tone that finally works. Then you move two inches across the cheek, mix the next one from scratch, and it doesn't belong to the first. Do that fifteen times and the face falls apart - not because any single color is wrong, but because none of them came from the same place.
That isn't how you mix at the palette. You mix one mother color for the midtone, divide it into piles, and push each pile: a little white into the light, a little blue into the shadow, a touch of rose where the ear turns warm. One mix carries the whole passage, and that shared parent is what makes skin read as skin instead of as a patchwork.
So BrushLens works the same way. Pick the tubes your base is built from, sample your midtone, and lock it. Every reading after that comes back as your base plus what you add - 85% Skin base mix + 10% Burnt Umber + 5% Titanium White - instead of a new recipe every time. One pile, pushed.
Set up as many bases as the painting needs. Skin for the head, another for a background you'd never mix from skin tone, a third for the fabric. Switch between them as you move around the canvas.
One pile for the whole passage. Each reading is your base plus what you add.
Away from the screen
Plenty of painters print the reference and clip it beside the canvas rather than squinting at a phone with wet hands. Two things in BrushLens are made for exactly that, and both come out as a file you can print.
The mixing chart. Hold one pigment constant and BrushLens crosses it with everything else you own, then walks each column down in steps of white. Reading a column top to bottom shows how far that pigment carries before white swallows it - that is tinting strength, the difference between a tube you add by the knifeful and one where a speck takes over. Every square has its mix printed underneath, so you find it by eye and mix by the numbers.
An honest note: the printed chart is for finding the swatch, then mixing by the numbers under it. Do not match wet paint against the print, or your printer's color cast ends up in the painting.
The painting record. Every color you sampled, numbered on the reference and listed underneath with its recipe. Print it, tape it to the back of the panel, and when you come back three weeks later you pick up the same mixes instead of guessing at what you did.
From painters using it
“Your app is amazing! I’m finally understanding color and value!”
“Portraits can be so challenging so I find this tool so helpful. This is such an efficient and valuable tool to help the learning process!”
“As a beginner I enjoy your method of doing the values first.”
“I’ve been using BrushLens for a few months now and it has helped me so much. This is the best app I’ve ever come across - can’t thank you enough.”
I'm Soren - an oil painter and educator. I built BrushLens because I kept doing the same analysis by hand before every painting: squinting for values, checking temperature, testing crops. Every tool in here is something I actually use at the easel, built around one principle: value first, then temperature, then color.
- Soren, oil painter & educator
Pricing
Seven days free on the subscriptions. Your card is entered now and not charged during the trial, and we email you three days before it ends.
If it doesn't change how you start your next painting, cancel from Manage Account before the trial ends and pay nothing.
Common questions
No. BrushLens runs in your browser - phone, tablet, or desktop. If you want it on your home screen like an app, you can add it in two taps, but it's optional.
Yes. BrushLens is built mobile-first and works on iPhone, iPad, Android, and any desktop browser. Saved studies stay on your device.
Yes. Pick from presets like the Essential 12 or Zorn, or build your own from a library of 100+ pigments - you can even add custom colors. Mixing recipes are calculated from the exact colors you own.
Yes. Save as many palettes as you like and name them however you think - by instructor, by genre, by the box you take outside. Switch between them in a tap, and they follow your account to your phone, tablet and desktop.
That's what the printable mixing chart and painting record are for. Print the chart on the same printer as your reference and the color shift lands on both, so the square you match by eye still points at the right mix - and the recipe is printed beside it, which is what you actually mix from.
Then it costs you nothing. Try every tool free for 7 days on your own reference photos. If it doesn't change how you start your next painting, cancel from Manage Account before the trial ends and you won't be charged.
Sign in, open Manage Account at the top of the app, and cancel there yourself. No email, no waiting for a reply. Cancel during the 7-day trial and you pay nothing at all.
Bring one reference you are about to paint. Give it seven days. If it does not change how you start, cancel from Manage Account and pay nothing.
Try free for 7 daysYour photos never leave your device · Runs in your browser, nothing to install
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Most painters take the year. You are not deciding again every month, and a year is about how long it takes for this to change how you start a painting.