A canvas printed with the design as outlined sections, each carrying a number, and a set of paint pots numbered to match. You fill in the sections. That is the whole idea, and it has been essentially unchanged since the 1950s, which tells you something about how well it works.
What follows is what actually arrives, what it is like to do, and who ends up enjoying it, without the marketing.
Why removing the decisions is the point
The usual explanation is that numbered painting makes art accessible to people without talent. That is not quite right, and it undersells it.
Painting freehand involves a continuous stream of decisions: what to paint, how to compose it, how to draw it, what color that shadow is, how to mix it, whether it is working. That stream is what makes painting tiring, and it is why a blank canvas stops most people who say they would like to paint.
A numbered canvas removes every one of those decisions and leaves the physical act: brush, paint, section, next section. With nothing to work out, attention settles onto the hands, and an hour goes past without you noticing. That is the mechanism, and it is also why people describe it as absorbing rather than as easy. It is not difficult. It is occupying, which is a different and more useful thing.
What is in the box
- Pre-printed cotton canvas, shipped rolled in a tube rather than folded, so it arrives without creases to flatten. This is the single most-mentioned thing in our reviews, usually by comparison with a kit somebody was sent that came folded.
- Acrylic paints, vacuum-sealed so they arrive moist rather than as dried discs.
- Brushes in a range of sizes.
- Printed instructions and an 11x17 printout of the design, which is what you read the numbers off rather than leaning over the canvas.
- A wooden tabletop easel, on framed sizes.
You need nothing else except water, a paper towel and a lamp. No palette, because there is no mixing. No solvents, because acrylic cleans up in water.
Sizes and framing
Stock designs come as 12x16 framed, 16x20 framed and 16x20 unframed. Framed canvases arrive already stretched on a wooden frame and hang on a nail the moment you put the brush down. Unframed costs less and is trimmed close to the printed edge, so it suits mounting to a board rather than stretching over your own bars.
A custom kit made from your own photograph also comes in 18x24, which is the largest canvas available here.
Take the larger size on any detailed design. It is the same picture printed bigger, so every section is bigger too, which is the difference between needing a magnifier and not.
How long it takes
A straightforward 12x16 is ten to fifteen hours. A demanding 16x20 can run past twenty-five. Most people do forty minutes to an hour at a time, several evenings a week, and finish over two to four weeks.
Nothing spoils if you leave it. Close the pots, put the canvas somewhere flat, and pick it up a month later.
What the designs are
Ledgebay licenses original artwork from wildlife and landscape painters rather than adapting stock photographs, which is why these hold up as pictures: they were composed as paintings. Cabins on still water, songbirds, lakes at dusk, garden flowers, coastlines, snow.
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. If those are what you want, this is the wrong shop, and it is better to say so.
Who ends up doing this every evening
From what customers tell us, three groups.
People who wanted an alternative to a night of television that leaves an object behind. This comes up constantly, usually phrased as a comparison with scrolling on a phone.
People who used to make things and stopped, and want a way back in that does not start with buying a lot of equipment and being bad at it for a year.
People who want their hands busy while their attention is somewhere else, whether that is a podcast, a conversation, or something they are working through.
Who it does not suit: anyone whose pleasure in painting comes from the decisions. If mixing a color until it is right is the enjoyable part for you, this format removes exactly that. Buy a blank canvas and tubes instead.
Getting a good result
- Work largest sections to smallest, and top of the canvas downward so your hand is not on wet paint.
- Do one color at a time across the whole canvas before rinsing. Far less washing up, and you stop missing sections.
- Pale colors often need a second coat to cover the printed number. Let the first dry first.
- A drop of water revives a thickened pot. Close the lids every time you change color.
- Put the lamp beside you, not behind you, so you are not working in your own shadow.
- Let the finished canvas cure a few days before framing or varnishing. Dry to the touch is not hard.
If a heavily used color runs low there is a matching extra paint set for every design, which is one of the most-ordered things in the shop for exactly that reason.
The beginner's guide goes further into the mechanics, and finished canvases from other customers are in the customer gallery.
