Buying a first numbered kit is mostly a matter of three decisions: which picture, which size, and framed or not. Everything else can be sorted out once the box is open.
Choosing the picture
Pick the one you actually want to look at. That sounds obvious and it is the decision people most often talk themselves out of, usually by choosing something that looks easier instead. You are going to spend ten to twenty hours with this picture and then hang it somewhere you will see it every day. Interest carries a project further than simplicity does.
Then apply one check. Look at the busiest corner of the design in the product photograph, not the calm middle. That corner is where the small sections are and it is what the last third of the project will feel like. Dense foliage, crowds, lace and intricate stonework are the demanding ones. Sky, water, open fields and large simple shapes are the forgiving ones.
Before any of that, where to buy paint by numbers sorts out the three quite different products that all come up under the same search.
If you would like a starting point, Summer's Song is the one we would hand to somebody who has never painted anything: a canoe on a rocky point, a campfire, and a lake gone completely flat. Most of the canvas is wide and simple, and reviewers say directly that the numbers on it are easy to read, which is not something they say about every design.
Choosing the size
Buy the larger one. It is the least intuitive advice in this article and the most useful.
A 16x20 and a 12x16 of the same design have the same number of regions. The larger canvas spreads them over more area, so every shape is bigger and every printed number is bigger. If your eyes are anything less than perfect, that difference decides whether the evening is pleasant or a squint.
Framed or unframed
Framed means the canvas arrives already stretched on a wooden frame. You paint it as it is and hang it the moment you put the brush down. Nothing to mount, no trip to a framer, and our framed sizes include a small wooden tabletop easel.
Unframed is the same canvas and the same paints for less money, rolled flat. One thing to know before you choose it: it is trimmed close to the printed edge, so there is not enough spare material to stretch it over a frame afterwards. Taping or mounting it to a board works well. Stretching it usually does not, and we would rather say so now than have you discover it at the end.
What is in the box
- A pre-printed cotton canvas, rolled in a tube rather than folded, so there are no creases to fight
- A full set of acrylic paints, vacuum-sealed so they arrive moist rather than skinned over
- Brushes in a range of sizes
- Printed instructions and a full-color reference photo
- An 11 by 17 inch printout of the design, so you can check a section without leaning over the canvas
- A wooden tabletop easel with the framed sizes
What to have ready before you open it
Five minutes of setting up saves a great deal of irritation later.
- A lamp that comes over your shoulder. More complaints about faint numbers are lighting problems than printing problems. This is the single most useful thing on the table.
- Two jars of water. One to get the worst off, one to rinse clean. A single jar turns into gray soup within the hour and puts that gray into your next color.
- A cloth to wipe the brush on, and a sheet of clean paper to rest your hand on so you are not lying on a wet region.
- A magnifier, if the finest sections give you trouble. There is nothing embarrassing about it and plenty of our customers keep one on the table.
The first evening
Open one pot at a time and close it again when you have finished with that color. Acrylic skins over fast in an open pot, and a skinned pot is a lost color.
Start with the largest area of a single color and paint every region carrying that number before you move on. It fills the canvas quickly, which is encouraging, and it saves you cleaning the brush every two minutes.
Work from the top of the canvas downward and away from your painting hand, so your wrist is never resting on something wet. Carry each color slightly over the printed outline rather than stopping short of it, or you will finish with a pale line around every shape and it will look like a filled-in coloring book rather than a painting.
Expect to be slower than you thought. Two hours in, most of the sky will be done and it will not look like much. That is normal and it is not a sign that you have chosen badly.
Two things nobody warns you about
Pale colors need two coats. Every region has a black printed number in it, and yellows, creams and pale blues will not bury it in one pass. Let the first coat dry and go again. This is the kit working as intended, not a fault.
You may run out of one color. Usually the sky. A heavily used pot is the most common reason a canvas gets abandoned at eighty percent, which is why there is a matching replacement paint set for every design. A pot that has only thickened, rather than dried solid, usually comes back with a drop of water and a proper stir.
When it is finished
Hold the canvas up to a window and look for anywhere a number still ghosts through. Give those a second pass. Then paint the edges if it is a stretched canvas, wait a week, and put a thin coat of acrylic varnish over the whole thing.
After that, hang it somewhere you walk past. Ten to twenty hours is a real investment and it deserves better than a cupboard.
Our guide for beginners goes into the technique in more depth, and how long a paint by number takes gives you a realistic sense of the commitment. The designs themselves are in the full collection.
