Why this exists

Painting from a photograph, the slow part is rarely the brushwork. It is standing back every few minutes to decide whether a patch of cheek is warmer than the patch beside it, and whether that fold of cloth is the same shade as the one above it or half a step darker. Get those decisions wrong early and no amount of good brushwork rescues the picture.

Varnika takes those decisions on. It reduces the reference to a number of shades you choose, shows exactly where each one belongs, and works out how to mix it from the tubes you already own. The name comes from Sanskrit “varṇa” — colour.

What it deliberately will not do

It will not paint for you, and it does not try to. Blending, edges, texture, the weight of a stroke and every decision about what to emphasise are yours — a map that flattened all of that would produce something worse than a painting. What you get is a structured start: what colour, where, and how much.

Your work stays yours

The analysis runs in your browser. Your references are never uploaded, because there is nowhere to upload them to, and the app keeps working with the connection off. That is a deliberate choice about your reference photographs and unpublished work, not a limitation.

Get in touch

Write to Support contact will be published before launch — for a problem, a paint brand that should be in the library, or to show what you painted with it. Studio-plan messages are answered first.