This is the most common complaint about paint by numbers, and almost all of it is solved by not reading the numbers off the canvas at all. Twelve of our own reviews mention needing a magnifier. Here is what actually helps, in the order worth trying. Numbers that have gone entirely are a different problem, and the reference print is the way back.
1. Read the numbers from the printout, not the canvas
Every kit includes an 11x17 printout of the design with the sections and numbers on it. It is not a packing extra. It is the thing you are meant to work from.
Prop it up beside the canvas, find the section on the printout, then paint the matching section on the canvas. You are looking at a sheet of paper at a comfortable distance instead of leaning over wet paint with your nose six inches from it. That one change removes most of the difficulty, and it also removes most of the smudging, because smudging happens when you lean in.
2. Photograph the canvas before you start
Take a clear, straight-on photograph of the blank printed canvas in good light, before any paint goes on. Then when a number is unreadable later, open it on a phone or tablet and pinch to zoom. Going up a size is the other fix, and the large canvases give every section noticeably more room.
This is better than a magnifying glass in almost every way. The zoom goes further, the screen is backlit, and it still works when the number has been partly covered by an adjoining color. It costs ten seconds at the start and solves problems for the rest of the project.
3. Move the lamp
Light coming from behind you casts your own shadow across the exact patch you are working on. A great deal of squinting is caused by that rather than by the printing.
Put the lamp to the side, slightly in front, on the opposite side from your painting hand. An adjustable desk lamp is enough. A daylight-temperature bulb makes the printed lines read more sharply than a warm bulb does, and it also lets you judge the paint colors accurately.
4. Take the larger canvas next time
Worth knowing before your next order rather than during this one. A 16x20 is the same design as the 12x16, printed larger, so every section and every number is bigger. On the more detailed designs this is the difference between needing a magnifier and not.
What makes a design fine is visible in the listing photograph: grass blades, feathers, distant foliage and small lit windows are where the tiny sections live. Broad sky, water and snow are not. If a design looks intricate, take the 16x20.
5. A magnifier, if you want one
A magnifier lamp, the kind on an arm with a ring light around the lens, is the version that works, because it solves magnification and lighting together and leaves both hands free. A hand-held magnifying glass means painting one-handed, which is worse than the problem.
Reading glasses one strength up from your usual, kept for painting, are a cheaper answer that plenty of people find sufficient.
Two things not to do
Do not go over the numbers with a pen. This gets suggested a lot. Ink sits on the surface and will show through the pale colors, which need two coats to cover the printed number as it is. You will be covering your own additions.
Do not try to re-number the canvas from a photograph. By the time a section is genuinely unreadable, working out its number by inference is slower and less reliable than the two fixes above.
When a number really has gone
It happens: a smudge, a slip, a section that was faint to begin with. Work it out from context rather than guessing at random.
- Look at the printout. The section is on there even if it is gone from the canvas.
- Look at the sections around it. Numbered designs are built from gradients, so a missing section is almost always one step lighter or darker than a neighbor, not a color from elsewhere in the picture.
- If two candidates are equally plausible, use the one that matches the reference image. On a small section, either will look right, and nobody will ever find it.
This last point is worth saying plainly. A single section painted one shade off is invisible on a finished canvas. It is not worth an hour of worry.
Preventing it in the first place
- Work top to bottom so your hand rests on canvas you have not painted yet, and left to right if you are right-handed.
- Put a clean sheet of paper under your hand where it rests. It keeps hand oils and stray paint off the printed lines.
- Do one color at a time across the whole canvas. You are then hunting for one number rather than reading every number in turn, which is far less eye work.
- Keep the canvas rolled in its tube, or flat, until you start. Ledgebay canvases ship rolled precisely because folding is what damages a printed canvas.
More on working through a canvas in the beginner's guide. If a kit arrives with printing genuinely too faint to work with, that is a fault rather than something to work around, and worth telling us about.
