Waterwheel - Colour wheel

Waterwheel is a pocket watercolour companion for artists who want colour decisions to feel clearer, quicker, and more grounded in real painting practice. Waterwheel operates offline - no need to have an internet connection, and none of your personal data is harvested. No social media connections, no 'friend this person', no in-app purchases. This is a phone-display first app.

At its centre is a practical colour wheel for exploring mixes, harmonies, warm and cool shifts, and useful relationships between pigments. It is designed for painters who want more than a decorative wheel: Waterwheel links colour choices to pigment families, manufacturer names, blend behaviour, and field-ready reference notes. Waterwheel includes concise Help, glossary notes, and guidance written for painters.

The app is organised around four studio areas:
• Wheel — spin and compare outer and inner hues, read calculated blends, and open manufacturer matches with staining, granulation, and harmony tools.
• Frame — study live scenes with Claude Glass (circular value study) and View Finder (composition ratios), using your camera when you allow it.
• Palette — save the paints you use, add colours from bundled manufacturer catalogues or as custom entries, and track your working supplies.
• Learn — browse glossary terms, tools, and technical notes written for painters.

Use Waterwheel to:
Explore colour harmonies
Find complementary, analogous, and triadic colour paths, with visual swatches that help you judge a palette before you paint.
Compare pigment character
Review pigment notes, colour families, warm/cool tendencies, and practical painting behaviour such as staining or granulation where catalogue data is available.
Build your palette
Save your paints, add colours from manufacturer catalogues, and keep a simple working list of your own supplies.
Study with Frame
Claude Glass simplifies a scene through your camera view, making it easier to judge value and broad colour relationships. View Finder helps frame a scene with crop ratios while you sketch or paint outdoors.
Learn while you work


Manufacturer catalogues currently listed in the app include: Art Spectrum, Daniel Smith, Da Vinci, Daler-Rowney, Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer, Golden QoR, Grumbacher finest, Isaro (Belgium), Kuretake Gansai Tambi, Lukas Aquarell 1862, M. Graham, Michael Harding, Old Holland, Schmincke Horadam, Sennelier, Turner Artists Watercolours, Winsor & Newton Cotman, and Winsor & Newton Professional.

Waterwheel is built as a focused studio and field tool. It is not a social app, a shopping platform, or a cloud account system. It is intended to sit quietly beside your sketchbook, palette, and brushes: ready when you need a second look at a colour choice, a harmony, or a manufacturer pigment name.

Designed for watercolour painters, urban sketchers, plein air artists, students, and anyone who loves colour.