Ruskly Pigments

Ruskly Pigments is a small studio tool for the part of painting that happens before the brush touches the paper.

The mixer works in parts, not percentages
Choose up to four pigments, set how many brush-loads of each, and watch the preview change. Two parts ultramarine to one part cadmium yellow gives a muted blue-green — not the acid green a screen-colour blender would show you, because the mixer works on an artist's wheel where blue and yellow behave the way they behave in a pan. It is a preview, not a colour match, and the app says so on the screen.

Thirty-six pigments, described the way a paint list should be
Each entry carries its pigment index — PB29, PR122, PBr7 — along with transparency, lightfastness, whether it stains or lifts, and a line of plain advice. Phthalo blue has enormous tinting strength, so add it last and in tiny amounts. Cerulean sits on the paper rather than staining it, so it lifts cleanly. Filter by blues, reds, yellows, earths, greens, violets or neutrals.

A swatchbook that remembers the recipe
Save a mix and it keeps the colour, the parts that made it, and a note if you wrote one. Two parts Prussian blue to one part burnt sienna, filed under the name you gave it, findable in November when you liked it in March. That is the whole point: a mix you cannot repeat is a mix you did not really make.

Seven notes, no course
Why two colours make mud. Transparent against opaque. How to read a lightfastness code. Greens without a green tube. Greying a colour without reaching for black. Short pieces, written to be read once and remembered.

Set in a paper palette with a violet accent, no clutter and no tutorial to sit through. Nothing to sign up for — the swatchbook is one database file living in the app's own folder.