Most of what goes wrong with a paint by numbers canvas goes wrong in the same handful of ways, and nearly all of it is avoidable. Here are the mistakes worth knowing about before you start, roughly in the order you are likely to meet them.
a guide to avoiding them takes the same ground in the order you are likely to meet each one.
Before you begin
1. Painting in poor light
This causes more problems than anything else on the list. The printed numbers are small, and in dim light you will misread them and paint sections the wrong color.
Set up an adjustable lamp positioned to the side rather than overhead, so it does not glare off the wet paint. A daylight-balanced bulb helps you judge color accurately. If the sections are fine, a magnifier is a sensible tool rather than an admission of defeat — plenty of people who paint regularly use one.
2. Not letting a rolled canvas flatten
A canvas that has shipped rolled needs to relax before you paint on it. Lay it flat for a day, or under a few heavy books overnight. Paint applied while the canvas is still curled will crack along the curve once it flattens out.
3. Skipping the instruction sheet
It takes two minutes and it answers questions you would otherwise guess at — whether unnumbered areas stay unpainted, what to do when a shape carries two numbers, and how the reference print maps to the canvas.
4. Not photographing the canvas first
Take a few photos of the blank printed canvas before you start. If you later cover a number with a stray brushstroke, the photo tells you what belonged there. You can also zoom in on the tiny sections, which is easier than squinting at the canvas itself.
While you paint
5. Starting with the light colors
Work dark to light. Dark colors cover the printed numbers in a single coat where pale ones often need two, and a light color that strays into a dark section is easily covered when you get there. The reverse is much harder to fix.
There is more on the reasoning in our guide to starting with light or dark colors.
6. Working from the bottom up
Start at the top and work down, so your hand always rests on finished, dry areas rather than wet ones. If you are right-handed, work left to right; if left-handed, the reverse. Resting your hand on a spare sheet of paper is worth doing either way.
7. Jumping between colors
Paint every section carrying the same number before moving on. It uses less paint, saves constant brush-washing, and stops you losing your place. Hopping around the canvas is how people end up putting the wrong color in a section.
8. Loading too much paint on the brush
Thick paint sits proud of the canvas, dries with a raised edge, and catches the light differently from everything around it. It also takes far longer to dry, which means more chance of smudging it.
Two thin coats cover better than one heavy one and look better doing it.
9. Over-thinning the paint
The opposite error. A drop or two of water loosens paint that has stiffened, but past roughly a quarter water by volume you are diluting the binder that makes it stick and cover. The paint goes transparent, the printed numbers show through, and it can lift off later.
10. Using one brush for everything
A brush sized for a large sky will not stay inside a small section. Use the broad brush for big areas and keep a small round brush for the detail. If you buy one thing to add to a kit, make it a size 0 or 1 round — that is where kit brushes most often fall short.
11. Leaving the pots open
Acrylic starts skinning over within minutes of being exposed to air. Half an hour with a lid off is enough to change the texture of a small pot, and this is the single most common reason people run out of a color.
Open one pot at a time, close it before opening the next, and seal what is left when you finish for the evening.
12. Not letting sections dry
Two wet sections meeting will bleed into each other and blur the printed boundary. Give a section time before painting the one beside it, and give the whole canvas longer than you think before handling it.
Fixing and finishing
13. Trying to correct a mistake while it is wet
Wiping at a wrong color while it is wet spreads it into the surrounding sections and turns a small problem into a large one.
Let it dry completely, then paint over it with the correct color. Acrylic is opaque enough to bury almost anything in two or three thin coats. If a dark color has strayed into a pale section, going over the area with a white colored pencil first will help the pale paint cover in fewer coats.
14. Using solvents on brushes or paint
Kit paints are acrylic, which means water. Nail polish remover, mineral spirits, turpentine and white spirit are solvents for oil paint — on acrylic they break down the binder, and on synthetic brushes they damage the bristles.
Warm water and a little mild soap cleans everything. If a pot has thickened, a drop of water is the fix; our guide to reviving dried paint covers the limits, and if a pot has cured solid there is a matched replacement set for every design.
15. Rushing the end
The last ten percent is the fiddly part — the smallest sections, the second coats on pale colors, the tidying of edges — and it is where people get impatient and stop. That last stretch is most of the difference between a canvas that looks finished and one that looks abandoned.
These are designed to be done across several evenings. If you are tired, stop; tired eyes misread numbers and unsteady hands stray over lines.
Two things that are not mistakes
Making mistakes. Acrylic covers. Almost nothing you can do to a paint by numbers canvas cannot be fixed by letting it dry and painting over it. Working carefully is worthwhile; working anxiously is not.
Going off the numbers. Nothing obliges you to follow the palette exactly. Softening a few edges where colors meet, adding a highlight the kit does not provide, or putting texture into foliage will all improve the result. Our guide to making a canvas look better covers where that is worth doing.
And one worth knowing about kits generally
Quality varies more than price suggests, and three things separate a good kit from a frustrating one: whether the canvas ships rolled or folded, whether the paints are sealed properly, and how readable the printed numbers are. A creased canvas and a dried-out pot will spoil an evening regardless of what the picture looks like.
You can see the Ledgebay designs in the shop, or look through the customer gallery to see finished ones. If you are starting your first canvas, our beginner's guide walks through the whole process.
