What We Have Learned From a Thousand Painters
We went back through about a thousand reviews people have left us over the years, looking for the things that come up again and again. Not complaints exactly — more the things you only find out by doing.
This is what we found, in roughly the order you will meet it.
Before you start
Let the canvas relax
Your canvas arrives rolled in a tube rather than folded. This is deliberate, and it is the thing customers mention to us more than anything else — a folded canvas arrives with permanent creases through the image that no amount of flattening removes. Rolled canvas has no creases, but it will want to curl back for a day or two.
Lay it flat under a few heavy books overnight before you begin. If you skip this, the edges keep lifting while you work and painting near the border becomes needlessly awkward. One painter described the sides continuing to roll as the most annoying part of an otherwise lovely evening, and she was right.
Light matters more than you would think
Most of the difficulty people report with reading the numbers turns out to be a lighting problem rather than an eyesight problem.
Daylight from the side is ideal. Failing that, a lamp positioned so it lights the canvas without casting your hand's shadow across the section you are working on. A cheap clip-on lamp does more for your comfort than almost anything else you could buy.
If the numbers in the finer areas are still hard to make out, a pair of reading glasses one strength up from your usual, or an inexpensive magnifier, makes the whole thing easier. There is nothing precious about this — plenty of experienced painters use one, and your kit includes an 11x17 reference print so you always have a larger copy to check against.
Set up somewhere you can leave it
A finished canvas takes most people somewhere between forty and eighty hours. That is not a warning, it is the point. Very few people sit down and finish one in a weekend, and the ones who enjoy it most are those who leave everything set up and come back to it.
A card table in a spare room beats the kitchen table you have to clear for dinner.
The first hour
Start with the big areas
Work from the largest blocks of a single color first. Two reasons: you build confidence quickly, and you get a feel for how much paint a section actually takes before you are working in the fiddly parts.
Work top to bottom, and background to foreground
You will rest your hand on the canvas. Better it rests on paint that dried yesterday than on a section you finished ten minutes ago.
One number at a time
It is tempting to open several pots and move around. Resist it. Working a single color to completion across the whole canvas means less paint drying out on the brush, less cleaning, and fewer mistakes.
The three things that come up most
1. The paint thickens in the pot
This is the single most common thing people write to us about, and it is not a fault.
Your paints arrive vacuum-sealed, so they start out fresh. Acrylic thickens as it meets air. Add one or two drops of water, stir it with a toothpick or the end of a brush, and it comes straight back. Add the water a drop at a time — too much and the color goes transparent and you will need an extra coat.
Close each pot properly when you move on to the next color. Most of the paint people lose is lost to lids left off.
If a pot has genuinely dried solid rather than thickened, write to us. That is a fault and we will replace it.
2. The brushes in the box are fine for one canvas
We would rather be straight with you about this than have you discover it halfway through.
The brushes included will complete your painting. But if you find you enjoy this and think you might do another, a small set of miniature brushes — the kind sold for model painting — makes the detailed areas considerably easier. This is the most common piece of advice our painters give each other, almost word for word.
A fine round brush for detail and a small flat for filling is genuinely all you need.
3. Light colors need two coats
Whites, creams, pale yellows and light blues will look thin and patchy on the first pass. This is expected, and it is deliberate — the paint is thin enough that the printed numbers stay readable underneath while you work.
Let the first coat dry properly, which takes about twenty minutes, then go over it again. The second coat is where the color arrives. Trying to fix thin coverage by loading more paint on the first pass just gives you ridges.
When something is not right
A section has gone muddy
Two colors have blended while both were wet, or a brush went into the next pot carrying the last color.
Let it dry completely. Then paint over it with the correct color — acrylic covers itself well, and once dry, nobody will find the repair. This is very difficult to ruin permanently.
The color does not look like the picture
The printed reference is a photograph of a finished painting, and screens and paper both shift color. Small differences are normal.
That said, if a color is clearly wrong — a green where the reference shows blue — tell us. We would rather know.
You are running low on a main color
This happens, usually on the color that covers the most canvas, and we would rather you told us early than eked it out.
Write to us at support@ledgebay.com with your order number and the color number, and we will send a replacement. Do not paint on hoping it will last. It is easier for everyone if you stop and ask.
We also sell a matching Extra Paint set for every design, which is worth having on the shelf if you are working on a large canvas or you paint your coats generously.
Your hands are not as steady as they were
You do not need a steady hand for this. You need a small brush and somewhere to rest your wrist.
Rest the heel of your hand on the canvas or on a folded cloth laid over the finished section. Brace your painting hand with the other one if that helps. Work in short sessions. Nobody is timing you, and the finished piece does not record how long any section took.
Finishing
Know your canvas edge before you plan a frame
Worth saying plainly, because it disappoints people who find out late: our unframed canvases are cut close to the printed image. There is not enough border to wrap and staple around a stretcher bar, so please do not plan on stretching one yourself.
What does work is a standard frame with the canvas laid flat behind glass or a mat, the way you would frame a print. Measure the canvas before you buy anything.
If you would rather not think about it at all, our framed kits arrive on the frame already and there is nothing to work out at the end.
Let it cure before you hang it
Acrylic is touch-dry in half an hour but takes several days to fully cure. Give it a few days flat before framing or hanging, particularly if you laid the light colors on thickly.
Then put it somewhere you will see it
The most common thing people tell us after finishing is some version of the same sentence: they did not expect to be as pleased with it as they are.
One painter wrote that everyone who comes into her remodeled kitchen looks straight at the picture. Another has hers in a dorm room. Someone who had not held a brush in thirty years now has three on the wall.
Put it where you will walk past it.
One last thing
Most people who write to us do not talk about the picture at all. They talk about the couple of hours where nothing else was asking anything of them.
One person called it her therapy. Several said they lose track of time entirely. Someone admitted to painting until four in the morning, which we are choosing to take as a compliment.
If that is what you are after, you have come to the right hobby.
Questions? Write to us at support@ledgebay.com. A real person reads it, usually the same day.
