Learn to paint with our paint by numbers kits—the most accessible and enjoyable way to start your artistic journey. We make learning to paint fun and achievable, even if you have absolutely no prior experience. Perhaps you've tried painting before without success? Or are you looking for a guaranteed way to succeed on your first attempt? Whatever your reason, we'll help you master painting with paint by numbers.

You don't need to tackle everything independently—while you're the one applying paint to canvas, we've prepared everything for you. The canvas comes pre-printed with your design, and you can choose from our extensive collection to create artwork you'll be proud to display.

We understand that learning to paint can initially seem daunting. It only seems that way—in practice, most people find it surprisingly manageable. We ensure your success through several key advantages.

5 Benefits of Paint by Numbers

How do you learn to paint while keeping it enjoyable? Here are 5 important benefits of paint by numbers:

• Enormous selection of paintings
• Numbered sections guide you
• Work at your own pace
• Painting with acrylic paint
• Display your finished art

1. Enormous Selection of Paintings

Learning to paint is about practice and motivation. You need practice to master techniques: How thick should you apply paint? What happens when colors blend slightly? Or not at all? While we can explain these concepts, you really need to experience them yourself.

Moreover, you can choose from various themes and subjects. Select from animals, flowers, cities, and famous art. This variety helps you discover what's available and choose your favorites.

2. Numbered Sections Guide You

Once your order arrives, you'll naturally want to start immediately. We make this easy with numbers on the canvas indicating which color goes where. The system precisely shows what's needed to achieve your chosen design or theme, eliminating guesswork.

You don't need to worry about proportions or composition. Instead, the numbers guide your learning process. You'll immediately see results, though you control how long you work and how often you paint.

3. Work at Your Own Pace

Learn to paint through an enjoyable new hobby where you set the pace. Have an occasional hour to spare? Or do you love spending entire mornings, afternoons, or full days painting? You decide—you have complete freedom.

Acrylic paint generally dries quickly, but you can easily continue where you left off next time. Thanks to the numbered sections, you determine how many areas to complete in one session and when to take breaks.

4. Painting with Acrylic Paint

While learning to paint, you'll use acrylic paint—water-based paint that most beginners start with. This paint is easy to work with and perfect for mastering various techniques.

5. Display Your Finished Art

Finished your painting? Congratulations! You've learned to paint, and that's not all. You can hang your artwork at home, proudly displaying what you've accomplished.

For many people, this motivates them to start their next project. This way, you quickly develop an enjoyable hobby that brings tremendous satisfaction. We ensure you can learn painting in a fun way without needing complex techniques immediately.

Paint Your Own Photo: Unique Wall Art

Learning to paint with our products and designs is great, but want something even more special? You can paint your own photo! We convert your photo into a numbered canvas, determining the different colors needed. This means you can paint personal memories, even while still learning, creating a fun new challenge.

Learn to Paint: The Best Way to Start

Learn to paint with our various products for adults and children. We'll show you everything possible on canvas—beautiful landscapes, animals, or stunning artwork. Everything is possible, and our numbering system makes it accessible and simple. This ensures you make the right choice with guaranteed success. Learn to paint with our paint by numbers kits and naturally improve your techniques.

Painting enhances concentration and distracts from daily worries and stress. But if initial attempts fail, we quickly abandon the "learning to paint" project. We'll show you how to apply painting techniques and provide tips on materials, colors, and subjects.

Painting for Beginners

When you want to paint, countless questions arise: What materials do I need? Which colors and style should I choose? How do I mix colors? And ultimately: What do I actually want to paint? Before starting, you should understand basic principles. Painting is versatile and requires patience. Initially, experiment extensively without expecting perfection. This maintains motivation and celebrates small progress. With time and practice, brushstrokes become easier.

Painting Techniques at a Glance

The most well-known and widely used painting techniques are oil painting, acrylic painting, watercolor painting, and gouache painting. We won't cover drawing techniques here. Below, you'll learn which method creates specific effects and what you can achieve with each.

Oil Painting

Oil painting represents the pinnacle of painting disciplines. It's especially used for portraits, landscapes, and still lifes. Many artists value oil paintings because color properties are particularly exceptional. Oil paint's durability and color brilliance remain unmatched compared to other paint types. As the name suggests, oil is the main component—an excellent binder for individual color pigments. Mixing these paints requires extensive practice, and they're expensive because you need many different components.

Acrylic Painting

Acrylic paint offers a more affordable alternative to oil paint. If you want paintings resembling oil paintings, choose acrylics. Acrylic paints come from various manufacturers, usually in tubes but also in small jars. When buying acrylic paint, invest in higher-quality products. These ultimately provide more satisfaction than cheaper alternatives, which often lack quality. Cheap acrylic paint typically has weak color intensity, requiring multiple layers for proper results.

We exclusively use acrylic paint for our paint by numbers paintings.

Watercolor Painting

Watercolor painting preceded modern watercolor techniques, using non-opaque water-based colors. You can use watercolors in many different ways—creating controlled, detailed portraits and landscapes, or painting loosely, impressionistically, or abstractly. Initially, watercolor painting proves quite challenging and can frustrate beginners due to numerous techniques. Using primary colors plays a crucial role in watercolor painting. Usually, you mix colors yourself, though pre-mixed options are available.

Gouache Painting

Unlike watercolors, gouache paints are opaque colors typically applied with various color pigments on white paper. By controlling water amounts, you create very different paintings. Many artists use gouache for landscapes or still lifes. Gouache offers an excellent starting point for painting and is often used in schools for early art education. Additionally, these colors are very affordable compared to all other methods.

Learn to Paint: 4 Tips to Get Started

Before picking up your brush, handle some basics first. For example, understand paints—how to mix them correctly and what effects they create. Don't get too caught up in theory. Painting should be intuitive, not just perfectionist. Still, some basic knowledge helps.

Study Color Theory

Swiss painter and art theorist Johannes Itten created the most famous representation of primary and secondary colors. He depicted twelve color fields total, with similar colors adjacent. Itten's color wheel provides information about color harmony relationships. Starting from one color, you can draw an equilateral triangle within the color wheel. The triangle's corners point to color fields that complement each other well. Colors opposite each other in the wheel are complementary pairs. Combined, these colors appear particularly beautiful to the human eye.

Primary Colors

Within the color wheel are three primary colors: yellow, red, and blue. These are called primary or base colors because they cannot be created by mixing other colors. Conversely, you can create all other hues from these colors. Itten's color wheel shows which colors to mix for specific results.

Secondary Colors

Mixing two adjacent primary colors creates secondary colors. Mix blue and red for violet, yellow and blue for green, and red and yellow for orange. The outer circle of the color wheel shows various gradations of secondary colors. You create gradations by adding more or less of a primary color.

Tertiary Colors

Tertiary colors are mixtures combining all three primary colors. These always produce various brown gradations. Brown tones occur frequently in nature, making them particularly suitable for landscape painting.

Understand the Effect of Colors

Colors typically develop their effect in relation to surrounding colors. But many people also attribute specific effects to individual colors. In color theory, yellow is considered stimulating, cheerful, uplifting, and bright. In the color wheel, yellow is the brightest, friendliest color. Yellow immediately catches the observer's eye.

In color theory, red represents energy, love, passion, activity, and sensuality. The color invigorates and stimulates. Red's actual effect depends on how you mix it.

Color theory attributes qualities like depth, coolness, calm, and transcendence to blue. Cool blue creates calm, relaxing feelings. Depending on how you mix blue, you can strengthen or weaken this mood. The warmer the blue, the more dominant it becomes.

Canvas versus Paper

Choosing your painting surface depends strongly on your intended painting type. For oil or acrylic painting, canvas is usually recommended. However, special acrylic paper offers an affordable canvas alternative for acrylics. For watercolor and gouache painting, you typically paint on paper. But art has no boundaries—watercolors can certainly be painted on canvas. Ensure you properly prime the canvas with watercolor ground so colors develop their full effect.

Learn to Paint: Choose Your Materials Carefully

Material choice also depends on your painting type. One thing is certain: you'll need brushes regardless. We'll list the most common brush models and explain their uses and methods. You'll also learn what else you need.

Brushes

Brushes consist of three parts: First, the bristles (also called the tuft), second, the metal ferrule holding the bristles, and third, the wooden handle, usually varnished. Fine brushes logically suit detailed work while large brushes suit expressive styles. Bristle texture plays a major role in technique. Acrylic paint adheres very well to synthetic bristles, while oil and watercolor paints especially stick to natural hair. We distinguish between two main brush types.

Flat Brush

The typical brush for oil and acrylic paint is the flat brush due to its versatility. Use the broad side to apply colors well and paint flat areas. The narrow edge creates lines and details. You should have flat brushes in various widths, from small (0.5 cm) to extra wide (10 cm).

Round Brush

Round brushes typically paint details. Often you only need them in small sizes. Paint very finely with the tip; paint flat areas with the broader body.

Easel

An easel is a stand for stretching your canvas. This allows you to stand before your painting and work in a standing position, which is very comfortable for your back. Before buying an easel, ensure the crossbar adjusts in height. If planning larger paintings, also check the crossbar width—50 to 55 centimeters usually suffices.

Palette

A palette is a small, round surface you hold in one hand for mixing paints for immediate use. Practical models with thumb holes are available in stores. You can also make your own palette from cardboard or plastic.

Find Simple Subjects to Paint

Think carefully about what you actually want to paint. Nothing diminishes desire more than sitting before a blank canvas without knowing what to paint. For inspiration, look at old masters' work or browse art books. However, your first decision is whether to paint figuratively (still lifes, landscapes, people) or abstract content.

Ideas for Creating Your Own Paintings

These inspiration sources immediately provide painting ideas. Furthermore, simply observe your daily life attentively. Beautiful subjects appear everywhere—often just beautiful lighting in a backyard or nature.

• Remember your past vacation (keep a travel journal)
• Paint a portrait of your favorite actor
• Paint an object from your home
• The classic: a fruit basket
• Listen to music and paint what comes to mind
• Exotic birds
• Paint your pet
• Paint the nearest meadow or flower field
• Rivers or lakes
• Mountains or hiking trails
• Use your partner or friend as a subject
• Use a famous work as a model
• Beautiful architecture
• Custom paint by numbers from your photo

Painting Benefits Children's Development

For children, painting exceeds mere boredom relief. It promotes both motor skills and creativity/imagination. Very young children still hold pencils with their entire fist. However, the more they draw, the more refined their control becomes, gradually producing real images. Most children begin by scribbling so-called "tadpole people"—human faces with arms and legs. However, the child must already analyze their environment rudimentarily and depict characteristic features.

The more frequently children paint, the more neural connections form in the brain, usually promoting the child's general intelligence. Parents should therefore encourage their offspring to paint from an early age. Babies can gain first experiences with finger paint, for example. Later, always have fine pens and sufficient painting materials at home. Painting together with children increases painting enjoyment and creates special parent-child moments.

Painting for Adults: Pure Relaxation

Painting isn't just a children's activity. Especially for adults, painting offers an excellent way to relieve daily stress and realize your own thoughts on paper or canvas without rules and guidelines. Additionally, it promotes concentration. When we paint, we release various happiness hormones and distract ourselves from problems. Of course, don't initially overwhelm yourself with overly complicated subjects or painting techniques. If the painting techniques we've presented still seem too difficult, there's an alternative. How about paint by numbers for adults?

Start Your Painting Journey Today

Learning to paint opens doors to creativity, relaxation, and personal expression. Whether you're drawn to the precision of oil painting, the versatility of acrylics, or the flowing beauty of watercolors, every artistic journey begins with a single brushstroke.

Our paint by numbers collection offers the perfect starting point, providing structure while you develop confidence and technique. Choose from hundreds of designs or create a custom kit from your own photo for a truly personal artistic experience.

Remember: Every master painter was once a beginner. The key to success lies in starting, practicing, and enjoying the creative process. Your artistic journey awaits!

Share your painting progress with #SwynkLearnToPaint - we celebrate every artistic milestone!