Spend less time preparing and more time making art. Organize your references, study them with grids & values, and mix color with confidence.
Artists Reference is made for painters, illustrators, and traditional artists who work with real materials, not pixels. It gives you the digital reference tools you need while you're creating physical art.
Key Features
- Gallery: Take a photo of your finished work, add a frame, and view them all together in your personal gallery.
- Value Study Mode: Instantly view your reference in 7-value scale to see shadows and highlights or greyscale to see tone and contrast clearly.
- Gridlines: Helps get your under-sketch down accurately.
- Side-by-Side View: Compare your reference and your canvas at the same time, optimized for tablets and stands.
- Crop and Frame Tools: Adjust composition and aspect ratio of your reference to match your canvas before you begin.
- Collections: Curated starter projects to help you practice and improve, including Animals, Architecture, Botanical, Figure, Landscape, Master Study, Portrait, and Still Life.
- Color harmonies: Experiment with color harmonies to define the feeling if your piece and save swatches
- Offline Friendly: Works anywhere, even in the studio or outdoors.
- Clean, Focused Design: No ads. No clutter. Just the reference tools you need.
- All of your artwork is private and only saved in your personal icloud. No artwork is visble to the internet or AI models
Made for Traditional Artists
Whether you're painting with oils, gouache, watercolor, or charcoal, Artists Reference helps you translate what you see into confident compositions and balanced values. Start with curated Collections to build your skills, or bring your own references for any project.
No AI art is used for any of the starter project references in this app. All photos are attributed to the original artists with links to their portfolio.
First off this app is really unique! So much potential! It seems to still be in active development so it’s not perfect .However…This app is incredibly generous I would describe it as a “Creative project manager”There is so much utility here!This is a tool I’ve been looking for! You get so many great tools for free! I definitely want to support this apps development.Suggestions:- When you upload a reference it gives you the ability to download it again. This is amazing. For your finished work I’d add the feature to download the framed version and the original file unedited as well! (Just like when you download your reference photos from the gallery)- adding the ability to place our own colors in the color mixer- ability to create a custom color palette in app similar to the color harmonies tool.- a gallery option so you don’t have to swipe to look through your completed gallery. (like a display of the pictures you can click, maybe even organize in folders) then you can display it in gallery mode with the picture frame or close up with the ability to view the description and other details in a digital menu.(Adding a switch from picture frame mode to a more digital interface would be cool and make it easier to admire your own work especially being able to zoom in)- adding a confirmation before you delete a project (The button is so close to the duplicate button. If someone’s finger slips their project would be ruined)Bugs I’ve encountered:- When you complete a work it doesn’t automatically go to the “completed” section! The completed section says 0 even when I added a “finished work”.- the app is a little laggy at times. - I feel the option for a more in depth tutorial showing how to use the interface would be good for many people!(for people who may not be as experienced with devices/ tech it may frustrate them!)- when you make a new project I have to open and close to app to access the new project which can be a bit frustrating.- after removing a project the screen doesn’t clear sometimes it just keep the project you just deleted open? I did this with one of the sample projects.I’ll update this review if I find anything else! Very amazing app I love what you’ve done this is perfect ⭐️
Developer Response
What a thoughtful review thank you! I am glad you are finding it useful and I will add all of these suggestions to my backlog! It is in active development as you said. I build this on the side for my own use so it’s really great to hear what features you are drawn to. I will work on these as soon as I can. Thank you!
• Your project list sort order is now saved between sessions.
• Confirmation prompt before deleting a project.
• Projects are now automatically marked complete after adding your final artwork.
• Deleting a project while it's open now closes it cleanly.
• Thumbnails now keep their correct aspect ratio in the project list.
• New setting to hide the star from the project list.
• Tidied up spacing and layout throughout the project list and settings.
• Link to walkthrough video on YouTube.
Bug Fixes
• Fixed an issue where a project would close when rotating the device to landscape.
• Fixed issue where Collections and Gallery link on ipad has squared off corners, now rounded.
• Various visual polish and stability improvements.
Version 1.62
The developer, Gil Osborne, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
Seller
Gil Osborne
Size
191.3 MB
Category
Graphics & Design
Compatibility
Requires iOS 26.0 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 26.0 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 26.0 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 26.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
