MY VALUE FINDER

I am by choice a very low-tech kind of artist.  Perhaps even a dinosauric artist.  One of my tools is this Value Finder, created in 1980 by Binney & Smith to use with the Liquitex acrylic range of grays. (On this scale, value 1 would be black, value 10 would be white.)  It's printed on a piece of stiff card stock, about 4 x 6.  The card itself has yellowed over the years, but that does not reduce its usefulness for me.  I lay the card over the area of art that I want to assess.  Then, looking through squinted eyes, I move the peepholes over the art until the color showing through the peephole blends in with the color on the card.  Presto---I have a value number.  Different scales of color value can look slightly different from each other.  This  doesn't matter.  The issue at hand is one of relativity, not absolutes.   I use this gadget to help me keep my artwork---the values of all my colors---consistent throughout a book.  If the darkest shadows in my key illustration have a value of 3, then I want all of the darkest shadows on every page to have the same value.  If my lightest colors in that key illustration have a value of 8, then I want the lightest areas of every page to have that same value.  If the costume of my main character is a nice bright red in its middle tones, then I want those middle tones to be of the same value throughout the book, no matter how small or large the character is on a particular page.  Consistency from page to page in picture book illustrations is critical---and this little card enables me to achieve that with ease.