Affordable Tool Now Available for Artists, Architects, Sculptors and Students

MONTROSE – Thanks to Montrose artist Delmar Leger’s ingenuity, an affordable tool is now available to help artists, architects, sculptors, and students with locating Golden Mean points on paintings, architectural plans, sculptures, and even garden and furniture design.

Leger’s Golden Mean Finder tool, now being produced by Ridgway-based Master’s Tools, is a simple and affordable tool to help locate Golden Mean points as well as three other useful measurements.

The Golden Mean, or Golden Ratio, is a consistency of design found in almost all creations, including flowers, leaves, fish, animals, and structures of the human body. This design can be identified in the ratio of 1 to 1.168…, also known as the constant “Phi.” Design engineers and fashion designers employ this principle in virtually everything produced.

“This concept has been known about for centuries,” said Jon Ferris, president of Master’s Tools, in an interview last week. “The ancient Greeks discovered that there was a ratio that was pleasing to the eye, and they designed the city of Athens and Parthenon on the basis of the Golden Mean. As the centuries rolled on, this was passed on from artist to artist, architect to architect.”

“Almost everything you see is based on the Golden Mean,” Leger continued. “The artists I have run into before have usually found the Golden Mean by 1.1618 and infinity and that can be come cumbersome. Some people use wheels to get it, and some use slide rulers. After a while, I thought, there has to be an easier way to do this.”

After three years of head-scratching, Leger designed and patented the Golden Mean Finder – a hinged three-legged ruler-like instrument that requires no mathematical calculations and is convenient, fast and simple to use. It works for both two-dimensional pictures and three-dimensional objects.

The Golden Mean Finder can be used to pinpoint and incorporate the Golden Mean and its various divisions with minimum effort. It can also be used to increase, decrease or conform the size of an object in question when comparing, reproducing an image or object when true proportions are desired. Determining the angle of an object in relation to a vertical or horizontal line can also be found with the tool. And it fits easily into an artist’s paintbox or a student’s backpack.

Annie Strack, an award-winning artist, art instructor and author of several articles and the book The Artists Guide to Business and Marketing, stated, “This tool makes it easier for me to explain the subconscious relationship between the golden ratio and an attractive composition, and helps my workshop students quickly visualize how subject placement can be used to build a stronger painting.”

I worked on this for about three years,” Leger said. “I was looking for something that is not only practical but easy to use. It is no coincidence that we’re releasing it just

before the holiday season. We feel it makes a great gift for the artist in the family.”

Ferris said that he has wholesale prices and is looking for distributors, art stores and galleries that are interested in selling the tool.

The Golden Mean Finder can be purchased online at www.goldenmeanfinder.com.