I posted a few paints by numbers in my Throw Back Thursday posts and today I have another. This isn't really a throwback, I just recently painted this one as a Christmas present for 2020 but I wanted to share it and the process I went through with you guys. So this one is called the LIUDAO DIY Oil Painting for Adults Kids Paint by Number Kit Digital Oil Painting on Canvas Horses Animal 16 x 20 Inches (Without Frame). Now I must confess that I didn't read the title, I didn't read the description. I was just excited to find one with horses, I bought it right away. Now I have never painted on a canvas before. I have never done paint by numbers like this, and I have no idea how to frame them. But we are still going to try it! Now, this kit came with a lot of stuff to make it even easier.
As you can see it came with instructions. Which were pretty straight forward, it talked about making sure to clean the brushes, and making sure the lids were snapped shut on the paints. That type of thing. Just the basic instructions for any paint by numbers. I noticed, and I am so happy, that they don't have any mixing involved. Some paint by numbers you have to mix your own colours using two colours they give. And that is such a tricky thing. You have to mix enough paint to do all the mixed numbers and when you miss one (and you always miss some), you have to try to mix the right combination to make the same colour. It can be very hard to do.
Along with instructions they sent a paper printout of the pattern, this is in case you paint over a number and you forget to do the whole thing or something like that. I don't see any in this one but in some paint by numbers need these more than others. This comes in handy when there are small sections, they will have arrows pointing to the area, and they sometimes get painted over. It also comes with a magnifying square. I don't really see the need for it with this one, but again some have small sections that you can't see the numbers on or even if you are painting in bad lighting it can be hard to see where the lines are, so it could come in handy. It also comes with three paintbrushes. They are pretty good brushes, there is one larger one and two smaller ones. If you do a lot of painting, I suggest buying better brushes that are more to your liking. I have a very small one with a small tip to do the smaller sections that I love. I always end up cutting up the brushes they send because I find they are never small enough. But you can buy brushes at the Dollar Store and experiment with them and see what works best. It also came with parts that you can add to the back of a canvas frame to hang it up.
And finally the paints. You can see in the photos there are 24 colours. Now sometimes the colours get thick. This could just be because they got cold or because they have been sitting around for a while. You will know if this is the case when you open the little pot. They usually will be stringy or you will notice a large amount on the cap. What I do is I dip my brush in my water, and then mix the paint together. This may be all it needs to loosen up. Also, I do this while I paint in I feel it needs it, however, I wipe some of the water off first if I am actually painting at the time.
So here is what it looks like with nothing on it. You will notice the creases on it. It came folded up like that. The instructions said to iron it out and that it should be fine. Surprise surprise, they didn't come out even after ironing for a while. So this is the best I could get it. But it should be fine.
Below is the finished product. It was fun to paint for sure. In the beginning, I was very worried about it. I was concerned it wouldn't come out properly that it would just look terrible. But I think most paints by numbers go through that and then once you add more and more to it, it starts to take shape. If you want to see the day by day process I will upload those photos to our Instagram page!
