A Paint By The Numbers kit comes with a numbered canvas along with numbered paints. You paint in a section with the color paint that matches it’s number.
This is the kit I purchased (I got it for $12.99). “Worldwide famous oil painting The Night Cafe in the Place Lamartine in Arles by Van Gogh”, which is supposed to be based off of Cafe’ Terrace at Night by Vincent Van Gogh.
You can immediately see by comparing those two photos that the Paint by the Numbers version is not nearly as detailed. I like it though. Obviously nothing can compare to the detail and surrealism of the original, but the blobiness of the kit version is oddly nice to look at.
Besides being a bit darker, my painting did end up looking almost exactly like it was supposed to, but I don’t think that I’ll be going a kit like this again. Why?
- It took forever. I would say it took me close to 20 hours
- It wasn’t very easy. I was expecting it to be a fun activity that was at a beginner’s level, but it was pretty hard to fill in all the little sections perfectly
- It’s not mine. I feel can’t post this on my art Instagram or anywhere else even though I spent a lot of time and effort on it because it was basically just like a coloring book
- It’s not very quality. I had to put multiple layers on some parts because the paint wasn’t very good. Also one of the paintbrushes they provided me broke before I was finished
- It doesn’t look like the original. It’s not hideous, but it definitely does not look like the original painting by Van Gogh that it was based on.
I did enjoy it, and I will be hanging the finished product on my wall, but there are just too many bad aspects about it for me to do another one.