"Pre-printed canvas" is used for three products that have almost nothing in common except the printing. One is a complete kit, one is a drawing with no paint, and one is not for painting on at all. Knowing which you are buying saves an annoying delivery.
1. A numbered kit
The canvas carries the design as outlined sections, each with a number, and the box carries pots of paint numbered to match.
Suits: anyone who wants to spend the evening painting rather than deciding. There is no drawing and no color mixing, so the decisions that stop most people are already taken.
What it does not give you: the picture is somebody else's, and when it is finished, that design is finished.
This is what Ledgebay makes. Every kit contains a pre-printed cotton canvas shipped rolled in a tube rather than folded, acrylic paints vacuum-sealed so they arrive moist, brushes in a range of sizes, printed instructions and an 11x17 printout of the design. Framed sizes also include a wooden tabletop easel.
2. An outline-only canvas
The design is printed as a line drawing with no numbers, and no paint comes with it. Sold as a shortcut for people who can paint but do not want to draw.
Suits: painters who already own acrylics and can mix confidently.
What it does not give you: any guidance about color. The outline solves the easier half of the problem. Deciding what color everything should be, and mixing it, is the harder half.
Check what the lines are printed with before you buy. Some are printed in a light gray that disappears under a single coat of paint; others in a dark ink that shows through anything pale.
3. A printed photo canvas
A full-color photograph printed on canvas and stretched over a frame. It is a finished wall piece and not a painting surface at all, though it turns up in the same search results.
Suits: people who want the picture on the wall today.
What it does not give you: anything to do. Acrylic will not sit well on the coated surface, so it is not a base to paint over.
Choosing between the first two
The honest test is what you want the evening to be.
If you want to make decisions, and mixing a color until it is right is the enjoyable part, buy the outline canvas and your own paints. If you want to stop making decisions for a couple of hours, buy the numbered kit. The removal of decisions is the mechanism here, not a compromise on it: the reason numbered painting settles people is that there is nothing to work out.
What to check on any pre-printed canvas
- How it ships. Rolled in a tube arrives flat within a day or two. Folded into an envelope arrives with hard creases that never fully come out. This is the most common complaint in the whole category and the most avoidable.
- Whether it is primed. An unprimed canvas soaks up paint and needs two coats of everything. Pre-primed cotton is the standard and what you want.
- How much margin there is around the print. A canvas trimmed close to the image cannot be stretched over your own bars later. It needs mounting to a board or framing under a mat.
- Whether a framed option exists. A canvas already stretched on a wooden frame hangs on a nail the moment you finish. An unframed one waits for you to do something about it, which for a lot of people means it never gets hung.
Your own image, pre-printed
If what you want is a pre-printed canvas of something specific rather than of a stock design, a custom paint by numbers kit converts a photograph you send in into a numbered canvas with paints mixed to match it. Sizes are 12x16, 16x20 and 18x24, framed or unframed, printed in the USA rather than drop-shipped from overseas.
Choose a photograph with clear light and one clear subject. Photographs taken indoors under a ceiling light convert poorly, and anything very dark loses the separation the conversion depends on.
The stock designs
Ledgebay's designs are licensed original artwork by wildlife and landscape painters rather than stock images, which is why they hold together as pictures: they were composed as paintings rather than cropped from a photograph. Americana, cabins on still water, songbirds, garden flowers and coastlines.
Browse landscapes, animals, flowers, cabins and ocean and water, or everything in the catalog. There is no abstract line, no portrait line and no reproductions of famous paintings here.
The beginner's guide covers how the sections and paints work, and finished canvases from other customers are in the customer gallery.
