Watercolor paint by number kits exist, and people ask about them constantly. The honest answer is that watercolor and the numbered format are working against each other, and it is worth understanding why before you spend money on one. Everything we sell is acrylic for exactly this reason, and we would rather explain why than offer a format that fights itself.
It comes down to a single property of the paint.
Watercolor is transparent. That is the whole problem
Watercolor gets its character from transparency. Light passes through the pigment, hits the white of the paper and comes back up, which is what gives a watercolor wash its glow. Nothing else behaves quite like it.
A numbered canvas, though, depends on the paint hiding what is printed underneath. Every region carries a printed outline and a printed number, and the finished picture is only clean if those disappear. Acrylic covers them because acrylic is opaque. Watercolor does not cover them, because covering things is precisely what it does not do.
So on a watercolor kit you can still see the grid of lines and the numbers through the paint, particularly in the pale areas of sky and water where the wash is thinnest. Manufacturers work around it in three ways, and each has a cost:
- Print the guides very faintly. The numbers become genuinely hard to read, which is already the most common complaint people have about numbered kits of any kind.
- Use thick, gouache-like paint. This covers, but at that point it is no longer really watercolor and you have lost the reason to want it.
- Supply watercolor pencils instead of paint. You color the region dry and then wet it with a brush. This works reasonably well, and it is a different craft from painting.
The surface is the second problem
Watercolor needs paper that is sized to hold water on the surface long enough for the pigment to settle. Cotton watercolor paper is built for this and behaves beautifully. Standard pre-printed cotton canvas is not, and a wash laid onto it either beads up or sinks in unevenly and dries blotchy.
Canvas can be prepared for watercolor with an absorbent ground, but that is a step you do yourself before painting, and it is not what arrives in a boxed kit. If you want to think about this properly, our overview of types of canvas for painting covers what different surfaces actually do.
What watercolor is genuinely good at
None of this is an argument against the medium. Watercolor is wonderful, and it rewards a completely different way of working:
- It stays workable. Dried watercolor re-wets, so you can lift color back off, soften an edge you have already painted, or push a passage darker days later.
- It dries lighter than it looks. A wash always loses some strength as the water leaves. Experienced painters mix stronger than they think they need.
- The white is the paper. There is no white paint in a traditional watercolor. Highlights are places you decided in advance not to paint, which is the hardest habit to learn and the most satisfying once you have it.
- It travels. A pan set, a brush and a jar of water fit in a coat pocket.
What all four of those have in common is that they involve judgment. Numbered regions exist to remove judgment. That is not a flaw in either one; they are just built for different evenings. If you want to try the medium properly, start with our guide to painting in watercolor rather than with a kit.
Why our kits are acrylic
We make numbered kits in acrylic, and the transparency question is the reason. Acrylic covers the printed guides in one or two coats, dries within minutes so you can paint an adjacent region without waiting, and stays put once it is dry rather than lifting when the next wash goes over it.
It also forgives mistakes in a way watercolor does not. Paint over a region in the wrong color and you can simply paint it again. In watercolor that region is now permanently darker.
The paints in our kits arrive vacuum-sealed so they are still moist, and the canvas ships rolled in a tube rather than folded, so there are no creases to fight before you start.
If you still want to try a watercolor kit
Two things will tell you most of what you need to know before you buy. Ask whether the kit is paint or pencils, because the pencil kits are the ones that mostly work. And look closely at the product photograph of the finished piece: if you can see the outlines in the pale areas of the sample image, you will certainly see them on your own.
finished canvases from our own customers show the same thing more usefully than a product photograph does.
We have set out the case against them in more detail in watercolor paint by numbers kits, including the handful of situations where one is the right choice.
And if what you actually want is a quiet evening and a finished picture on the wall, an acrylic kit is the shorter road. Our guide for beginners covers the first one from start to finish.
