Viewfinder Innovations

Today I thought I would turn to something more mundane and practical – but very useful for painting outdoors and for perceptual painters. A reexamination of new viewfinder possibilities.

For such a simple but useful tool, people have come up with all kinds of new and interesting approaches and ideas for this. A google search did not disappoint me when I started poking around.

Artwork Essentials has a 6 x 8 with color isolator holes and what looks like a clear plastic cover with grid lines on it that allows you to draw directly on the viewfinder to work out general compositional shapes I images. It is quite reasonable at 10 bucks for the larger and 5 for the small one and if you
routinely make paintings that fit that ratio is seems worth the investigation.

pictureperfect viewfinder.com
Here is another viewfinder that combines a value scale and red filter for judging values as well as a grid overlay at that looks promising.

However, I am more apt to go for the do it yourself versions – but I am getting some ideas from these commercial versions for including some upgrades in my next one. One last thing I learned that didn’t occur to me before. If you do use the two L-shaped sections you can get the self adhering Velcro and attach it to the L pieces to keep it from moving. (add markings to denote your common proportions. Here is a link to the article about putting it together this way

I still prefer to cut out a window that is proportional to the my canvas in a single piece of cardboard. I just use photoshop’s image size function or you can use a proportion wheel or an online version – link here. I then tape thin string that corresponds to the grid I draw on my canvas – all with the same proportions.
Works great to work out the drawing and composition.