Painting by numbers a therapeutic tool

Painting by numbers and adult colouring books have become very popular over recent years, this is because it has become known that it's therapeutic.  Colouring and painting is no longer (not that it ever was) just for kids.

I have many colouring books which have been bought for me over the years, some of which have been fandom-related, my favourite being my Supernatural Colouring book.  That being said, I've never really given a painting by numbers canvas much thought.  It's something I loved completing as a child and feel a little sad that that joy had left my memory!

I was given the opportunity by Paint By Numbers Online to review and paint one of their canvas prints.  After spending a lot of time on their web page, is it any wonder I went for a Harry Potter inspired Owl print?

Paint by Numbers Online.

Paint by numbers online has a kit for pretty much everyone from children themes, animals, and people to making up your own print!

Not only do you have a plethora of choice, but you are also given nine size options with prices ranging from £26 to £86 with some lovely bargains to be had in the sales.

The packs, as you see above, come with the canvas wrapped and little white stickers to be placed on each of the coloured pots, there is a guide to show which colour requires which number.  Along with the paints and canvas I also had three different thickness brushes, but being slightly impatient, I tended to use the largest of the three!

My Painting by Numbers

This took way longer than I thought it would and nothing like tiny numbers to highlight how poor my eyesight is!  Sound familiar anyone?

I'm so pleased I completed this!  As I mentioned above my first issue was time.  It became obvious very early on when I had taken an hour to complete colours 1 - 3 that this was going to take some time to do!  I had 24 colours to complete and this was not going to be slipped in-between doing the shopping and making dinner on a Saturday afternoon.

Why should it!  This is definitely a project for you to relax and take time over.  Once I actually set some time aside every few days or so it was really nice to just have the radio on in the background and take some time out to add random greens on the canvas and wonder if this was ever going to look like the print that came with the paints!

My second issue is my eyesight.  I'm very short-sighted and wear varifocal contact lens during the day so trying to flick from long distance to trying to find these tiny numbers was a struggle for me.  I found that slightly demoralising at first until I found my magnifying glass that we use for looking at fossils. 

My eyesight would make Mr Magoo look like he had 2020 vision so for me, owning a magnifying glass in my 40s is one of my best buys!  So my advice, do not be put off by the tiny numbers, there are ways around this!

I found that as I was painting I really couldn't see the picture forming, I was concentrating on finding each number but as I stepped away after each session, I felt a little glow as I could see what the picture was becoming.

I often missed numbers, so every now and then I'd dedicate a bit of time just to 'catch up' to the current number.  I blame that on my eyesight but what I also did was before I completed the very last colour I made sure that every other number was filled in so I knew the spaces left were the final green.

I'm so pleased with my print, so much so that I used one of my spare plain canvas' that I'd purchased from Wilkso a year ago and I got my faithful stable gun out and placed this print over the top!

I was most shocked and pleasantly surprised to find it was the same size!

Final Thoughts

When I was in high school, we were tasked to draw animals, I drew a whole parade of zoo animals and my teacher gave me an ungraded mark (Grade U), it was that awful!  So that gives  you an idea of how fantastic I am at drawing!  I'm also not that great at painting in the lines either I found out!  But I don't think either of my 'issues' show in the final print of my owls, wouldn't you agree?