Mirror, values and squint views in Easel by Zaweba

After an hour on a painting, you stop seeing it. Your eye fills in what you meant rather than what is there. Painters have always used tricks to look at their work with fresh eyes: holding it up to a mirror, squinting, photographing it in black and white. Easel by Zaweba has three of these built in: mirror, values and squint.

All three are view checks that exist only on screen and never affect the painting. Switch them on, look, switch them off. Nothing changes in your picture.

Mirror

The mirror view flips the picture left to right. It sounds simple, but it is one of the most effective checks there is. A face that seemed fine suddenly looks lopsided. A building that seemed upright leans. A composition that seemed balanced tips to one side.

This works because your brain has got used to the picture's errors. Flipping it makes the picture new again, so the errors jump out.

Use mirror whenever a drawing feels slightly off and you can't say why. Portraits, figures, architecture and anything symmetrical benefit most.

Values

The values view shows the picture in greyscale. Value is how light or dark a colour is, and it does most of the work in a painting. If the values are right, a picture reads well even in odd colours. If they are wrong, no amount of good colour saves it.

In greyscale you can see at once whether the main subject stands out, whether the lights are light enough and the darks dark enough, and whether too many areas are the same middle grey.

A common finding is that two colours that look very different are actually the same value. That is often why an area looks flat. Darken or lighten one of them.

Squint

The squint view blurs the picture, the way squinting at a real painting does. Details disappear, leaving only the big masses of light, dark and colour.

Squint is the quickest way to check composition. Does the eye go where you want it? Are the big shapes pleasing? Is there one clear area of focus? Squinting tells you in seconds.

Using the three together

Each check catches something different. Mirror catches drawing errors. Values catches tonal errors. Squint catches composition errors. A good habit is to run through all three at key moments: after the drawing, after the first block in, halfway through, and before you call it finished.

Step back adds a fourth check by showing the picture from a distance. Between them, they replace the old studio routine of walking across the room, holding the canvas to a mirror and squinting at it from the doorway.

Small habits, big gains

Check early. Problems found at the drawing stage are cheap to fix. Problems found at the end mean repainting.

Don't stay in a check view. They are for looking, not for painting. Flick in, decide what to change, flick out and paint.

Trust what you see. If the values view says two areas are the same, they are, however different they look in colour. These views are among the quietest tools in Easel by Zaweba, and among the most useful.