Painting by numbers is a method of creating a painting in which the image is divided into shapes, each of which is labeled with a number corresponding to a specific color. You paint in each area with the right shade and eventually the painting becomes complete. A completed painting by numbers will help you learn to analyze a subject and observe how a whole composition is created from colored areas.
The art of grouping spots
The paint-by-numbers approach is often derided as simplistic, uncreative and formulaic. But it is worth noting that the picture is created using many colored spots. They often seem meaningless individually and don't look like anything "real", but together they form a group. The next step in developing as an artist is to learn to see such color spots in a picture yourself, without the help of a printed circuit. This will help you focus on what the finished project will look like without looking at small areas and wondering what colors they should be painted.
Start with the darkest color and end with the lightest, or vice versa, leaving all the segments that have a mixed color until the rest of the shades run out. This will help you learn a little about tone and halftone in painting.
Contents of a paint-by-numbers kit
Pictures for coloring can be found in almost any craft store. The Paint by Numbers kit will include a brush, small pots of paint in any number of colors needed, and a drawing diagram printed on a canvas or cardboard base. You may think there is not enough paint in it. But it should be enough to complete the picture.
Each set contains a specific type of paint, acrylic and oil are the most common, but there are options with watercolors and pencils. And yet, the last option suits few, because painting by numbers is an excellent exercise in brush control. This way, you know exactly where the paint should go and can concentrate entirely on applying it.
The advantages of painting by numbers
Controlling a brush to paint accurately to an edge or a specific point is an important skill that every aspiring artist should develop. In sets it is usually small so that you can draw the smallest figures in the picture. Just follow the pattern and you'll be amazed at what you can create. As you work, it may turn out that some figures have two numbers, and not just one. This indicates to mix two colors together. The benefit is that you will learn to divide the paint into equal portions to create a suitable color.
But don't dip your brush from one paint container to another, as this will contaminate the colors. Mix a large amount on a non-porous surface and then paint over the desired area. If you try to mix two colors in the picture itself, you may end up with too much paint coming out through the edges of the shape.
How to create a number painting kit yourself?
Wanting to save money or not finding a suitable painting option, many artists begin to think about how to make paintings by numbers with their own hands. This is not as difficult to do as it seems. Do-it-yourself paintings by numbers from your own photographs can be made using special services and programs. If you know how to use graphic editors, such as “Photoshop” or “Illustrator”, and you know what tracing is, you can parse the picture yourself into fragments with a certain color and number them manually, placing each color on a separate layer.
But this process is quite labor-intensive and time-consuming. Therefore, to process images and create a painting by numbers with your own hands, it is easier to use ready-made programs. Paid versions usually more convenient and contain more functions, for example, selection of paints indicating mixing proportions. Such programs include “Coloring” and Stoik Color by Number. Free services Usually they are only able to disassemble the picture into areas, but they do not offer a selection of colors. These options include mozzz.art and PhotoPad Photo Editor.
Selection of art materials
But first you need to decide suitable type paints. Acrylic paint is preferable to oil paint because the paint dries quickly and washes off the brush with water, making it easier for a beginner to start with. But drawing in such a way that you can finish part of the image at a time will be problematic. Acrylic dries quickly on the palette, and you will have to work very quickly.
Also, during the process you will need to wash your brushes many times, and paint consumption will increase. Therefore, when working with acrylic paint, it is more convenient to paint one color at a time, starting from the largest areas and ending with the smallest. Starting with larger ones will give you more practice using the brush and paint. And by the time you get to the smallest spots, which are quite difficult to draw, you will have already developed the skill and the process will go easier. Working from top to bottom helps prevent paint from accidentally spilling onto areas intended for a different shade.
How to mix shades?
To create a painting by numbers with your own hands, you need to be able to mix the material in the right proportion to get the desired color. Paid programs usually indicate how much of which color to take to get the desired shade. But a lot depends on the paint manufacturer. Pigments from different companies may differ and give different results. Therefore, before making a painting by numbers, it is advisable to experiment and try mixing paints on a palette to compare with the image.
It is worth remembering that on the monitor all colors will look brighter and more intense than on a printout made by a photo printer. Therefore, you should not expect exactly the same rich shades as on a computer screen. But the advantages of this method include the fact that you can print any image. For example, make a painting by numbers with the hands of lovers for Valentine's Day and give it to your significant other, or turn a friend's photo into a work of art and give it to him on his birthday.
How to choose a brush?
We've sorted out the paints, but what to do with the main tool? It is advisable to choose a thin brush for details and a large one for large areas. It is important that it matches the paint you have chosen for the project. You can get by with just one thin brush, but this can make painting large areas very tedious. And when using acrylic it will lead to overuse of paint. Therefore, if you have a large brush, use it to paint a painting by numbers with your own hands.
How to stretch canvas and assemble a stretcher?
After creating a scheme and selecting paints, a new problem arises - how to transfer the scheme to the material and make a picture from it. To do this, the easiest way is to contact specialized companies engaged in printing on canvas in your city. Perhaps there will also be a service for stretching it onto a subframe. Otherwise you will have to do it yourself. To do this you will need the subframe itself. It can be disassembled, then the parts should be connected before work.
Sometimes you can make a stretcher for a painting by numbers yourself, using wooden planks. To stretch the canvas onto it you will need a furniture stapler with staples, a pencil, a spray bottle to moisten the canvas and a hammer. First you need to put the front side on the picture and smooth it out with your hands. Then place a stretcher on top and mark the boundaries of the canvas with a pencil.
Do-it-yourself stretcher for painting by numbers: step-by-step instructions
After this, you can start stretching; before doing this, you can lightly moisten the inside. The first bracket is attached to the center of one of the long sides. Then they stretch the canvas on the other side as tightly as possible, but not so much as to tear it, and fasten it on the other side in the same way. Sometimes you may need a hammer to drive the staple deeper into the canvas. A stretched strip should appear in the center. Then the same is repeated with the remaining sides. Next, the brackets are placed on the sides of one of the sides, then on the other, so that even tension is obtained. The corners are left free, about 5 cm short of them, so that the canvas can be tucked inside and neatly secured.
After everything is ready, it should be moistened with reverse side so that it straightens after drying. If you didn’t succeed in stretching the painting evenly the first time, you can wet it again and, by removing some of the staples, correct the shortcomings. After that, start drawing your personal work of art. Now you know how to make paintings by numbers with your own hands.
Using "Coloring Book" you can create real full-fledged paintings by numbers from any photographs or images! The program is presented in several versions, so its capabilities will satisfy both ordinary users who are comfortable with a computer, and paint-by-number producers who need powerful software to create professional sets (in fact, many producers use Coloring Book in version "for production").
So. In a few paragraphs I’ll tell you how using “Coloring Book” you can quickly and easily create a full-fledged picture by numbers from any photo, and then I’ll briefly describe the special features of the program provided in the versions for manufacturers.
Creating a painting by numbers using “Coloring Book”
1. Load the original image or photo into the program. To do this, simply click on “Load source image” in the upper-left corner of the main program window and select the desired file on your computer.
This is what the main “Coloring Book” window looks like after loading the original photo
2. Specify the parameters for the future painting by numbers. The most important thing is the number of colors and the size of the painting in centimeters. Simple, isn't it? 🙂 Additional settings that can be left “as is” or can be set individually for each picture:
“Coloring” is a block of the most important settings for a future painting by numbers
- The level of detail of the future painting (we specified average settings to make the painting simple and attractive). Detailing is adjusted using three sliders: “Number of parts”, “Smoothness of parts” and “Presence of small parts”. Everything here is also very simple - the more sliders to the left, the more realistic the picture turns out, but it is also more difficult to draw (there are many details). The more the sliders are to the right, the simpler the picture is to execute, with fewer details. For each painting, you can select your own optimal parameters - so that the painting turns out beautiful and is not difficult to draw!
- A way to select colors for a future painting. Everything here is also simple - you need to choose how the colors will be selected for the painting by numbers:
1. Either "Simple color selection"- then the program will try to select the closest colors to the colors of the original image, and you yourself will have to look for similar paints in the store or mix from others.
2. Either "For paints"- this is a very convenient option with the selection of colors to match real paints from real manufacturers! You need to tell the program which manufacturers to select colors for. You can choose acrylic and/or gouache from one or all of the manufacturers available in the program: “Nevskaya Palitra”, “Olki”, “Tair”. Simply put, when you turn on this setting, you will not have to bother with selecting paints or mixing them - the program itself will write which specific paints from which manufacturers to buy. By the way, all these paints are available in almost any stationery/hobby store.
3. And the third option - “For paints with selection of mixing proportions”. Similar to the previous “for paints” with the difference that the program will be able to select colors closer to the original image, but you will have to suffer with mixing in proportions. Of course, the “Coloring Book” will indicate which colors should be mixed in what proportions, but we must remember that this is only a software calculation of the “base”, and in reality you always have to add paints “by eye” to obtain accurate shades.
By the way, you can use not only those colors that are included in the program by default (“Nevskaya Palette”, “Olki”, “Tair”), but also add your own! This can be very convenient - for example, if there are “residues” from previous paintings and you need to put them somewhere. We add them all to “our palette” in the “Coloring Book” and create pictures specifically for them! Voila!
3. If necessary, indicate additional settings . If you click the “Important Settings” button, a window will appear in front of you with many additional, not very important, settings. For example, you can select the brightness for the contours and markings of the painting by numbers, the brightness of the colors that will be used to fill the contours (or not at all), you can configure the way paints are designated in the outline diagram of the painting (for example, only numbers, or only letters, and other different options) and various other not very important parameters.
4. Create a painting by numbers. It would be more accurate to call this item “create a layout”, but oh well. Click the “Create” button, wait a few seconds and admire the layout of the future painting that appears on the right side of the program window. Simply put, this is exactly what you end up drawing will look like! Like? Great, let's move on to point “5. Save…” (see below). I do not like? There is a way out - we change the main settings for creating a picture (see above - number of colors/size/detail) and recreate the picture with different settings until we get a result that pleases our soul. And - to point 5:
5. Save the created picture by numbers - what will you get? Ta-daaam! The most intriguing moment: the layout of the painting by numbers has already been created, click the “Save” button at the bottom of the main window, select an empty folder to save, wait a few seconds and, hurray! not on the table)!
A. The contour diagram of the painting itself by numbers- it's the most important! What is there to explain? If you are familiar with paintings by numbers, then you understand that because of this scheme with contours and symbols, all the fuss... :) “Coloring” will kindly place color symbols in the right places on the contours; for long or large contours, it will duplicate the symbols in several times so that your eyes don’t get tired of looking for them. If the contours are small, the program will try to fit symbols into them so that they do not “run over” the contour and there is no confusion. In a word - beauty! 🙂
Painting by numbers - the contour diagram itself with symbols
You need this file to purchase ready-made paints or mix them yourself, depending on the chosen method of selecting colors when creating a painting by numbers. Accordingly, the “Color Map” file will look different for each selection method. In the example - the type of file for the case when there is a selection specifically indicating the mixing proportions. The entire set of initial paints is indicated (with the names by which they can be bought in the store) and all the proportions to obtain the desired shades. This is not the easiest option, but the result is the most beautiful :)
V. View of your future painting. In fact, this is not a particularly useful file for work (except sometimes to look at it for convenience when drawing), but it warms the soul when you look and understand what a cool thing I will soon do :)
View of the future painting!
What else can you do in Coloring Book?
I have briefly described the most basic steps for creating a painting by numbers. But the program’s capabilities are much wider; I’ll give you those that immediately pop into your head:
1. On the second tab of the program - “Editing a picture” - you can fully manually complete the picture created by the program automatically. You can complete the details, change and delete them, add, replace and remove colors from the picture. A very useful tab in case you want to bring something into the picture that is not in the original image. But this tab is available only in the “Commercial” version of the program.
2. Before loading the original image into the program, you can use the built-in functionality for preprocessing the original photo: you can crop it as needed, adjust the brightness and contrast, convert it to sepia or black and white. Specifically, adjusting the brightness and contrast helps greatly to improve the result. So I advise you to take advantage of this opportunity.
Where can I print it? Where to buy paints?
You can print the resulting picture by number in any photo workshop (where ordinary photographs used to be printed), printing house, and even on a home printer with printing on thick Whatman paper. The main thing is that the printing is done on a dense material (canvas, cardboard, whatman paper - you can also buy it at printing places) and the material itself allows high-quality printing on it. However, usually this does not present any difficulties.
Regarding paints - I mentioned above, but I will repeat - if you create a picture according to the colors of the manufacturers included in the program, then these paints can be purchased at almost any hobby or stationery store. They are very common.
Additional features of "Coloring" for paint-by-number makers
“Coloring” is used not only by ordinary people to create stories based on own photographs, but also by many enterprises. HobbyLine has separate offers for them, here are some of them:
- The ability to integrate your expanded unlimited color palette to create scenes using your own paints.
- The ability to enable the “No Change” mode - when “Coloring” does not change the layouts loaded into it in any way, but only draws contours and puts symbols in them.
- Possibility to connect saving to vector format- to increase print clarity.
The "Coloring" program will create full-fledged coloring schemes (and paintings) by numbers from any of your photographs and images. Just load the original picture into the program, create a coloring scheme, print it, buy the necessary paints in the store - and go ahead, grab your brush!
If you wish, you can add the paints you have to the program, and the “Coloring Book” itself will tell you which paints in what proportions need to be mixed to obtain the desired shades - for each of your coloring pages!
We were truly able to create a unique program that has no analogues in the world! :-) A couple of clicks - and you can create a painting by numbers from any favorite photo.
You can even set the level of complexity of the painting you are creating - set three parameters (number of details, smoothness of details, presence of small details) and you will get either a beautiful and easy-to-draw painting, or a beautiful and detailed masterpiece, but difficult to draw. It's your choice!
A few words about the program, or why you should try Coloring Book right now:
- The program will create for you complete paint-by-number schemes from any image. You can draw a story based on your favorite photograph or a portrait as a gift to a loved one.
- The program is completed entirely in Russian.
- You can customize the level of complexity (and detail) of the painting you create.
- “Coloring” will select the necessary shades for the picture and indicate which of your paints should be mixed in what proportions to obtain this shade. Or simply create a coloring book to match your colors, without mixing - as you want!
- Installing the program is done in one click - you just need to run the installer file.
- Constant technical support by phone (in work time) and 24/7 via e-mail.
- We periodically release program updates with improvements and improvements. At the same time, all programs on customers’ computers are updated automatically (when the Internet is connected).
And yes, you can try the demo version of the program for free, but keep in mind that it is only a demo version, that you cannot create a full-fledged picture by numbers in it (but all the capabilities of the program will become clear). For those who doubt the quality of our program, within 14 days after purchase you can return the money, without giving reasons (just write to us).
We really tried hard and, it seems, we managed to develop a truly cool and unique program. I hope that it will bring you a lot of positive emotions! Now you can draw what you really want!
Screenshots
The "Coloring" program will create full-fledged coloring schemes (and paintings) by numbers from any of your photographs and images. Just load the original picture into the program, create a coloring scheme, print it, buy the necessary paints in the store - and go ahead, grab your brush!
If you wish, you can add the paints you have to the program, and the “Coloring Book” itself will tell you which paints in what proportions need to be mixed to obtain the desired shades - for each of your coloring pages!
We were truly able to create a unique program that has no analogues in the world! :-) A couple of clicks - and you can create a painting by numbers from any favorite photo.
You can even set the level of complexity of the painting you are creating - set three parameters (number of details, smoothness of details, presence of small details) and you will get either a beautiful and easy-to-draw painting, or a beautiful and detailed masterpiece, but difficult to draw. It's your choice!
A few words about the program, or why you should try Coloring Book right now:
- The program will create for you complete paint-by-number schemes from any image. You can draw a story based on your favorite photograph or a portrait as a gift to a loved one.
- The program is completed entirely in Russian.
- You can customize the level of complexity (and detail) of the painting you create.
- “Coloring” will select the necessary shades for the picture and indicate which of your paints should be mixed in what proportions to obtain this shade. Or simply create a coloring book to match your colors, without mixing - as you want!
- Installing the program is done in one click - you just need to run the installer file.
- Constant technical support by phone (during business hours) and 24/7 by e-mail.
- We periodically release program updates with improvements and improvements. At the same time, all programs on customers’ computers are updated automatically (when the Internet is connected).
And yes, you can try the demo version of the program for free, but keep in mind that it is only a demo version, that you cannot create a full-fledged picture by numbers in it (but all the capabilities of the program will become clear). For those who doubt the quality of our program, within 14 days after purchase you can return the money, without giving reasons (just write to us).
We really tried hard and, it seems, we managed to develop a truly cool and unique program. I hope that it will bring you a lot of positive emotions! Now you can draw what you really want!
Screenshots
Friends, we are glad to welcome you again to the pages of our blog. Well, if you come to us for the first time, then it’s doubly wonderful! We hope you enjoy our articles!
Today we want to share with you great program for children, which you can download completely free. The program is a coloring book in which your child (and maybe you too) will be able to color funny pictures with various characters. The program is very easy to use and is perfect for children 6-12 years old.
Kea Coloring Book review.
The official website of the program is www.keacoloringbook.com
Versions available for both Windows and devices Android platform. A version for iOS should be available soon.
Download the program for Windows.
To download the program, follow this link and click “Download now”.
Download the program
After the program has downloaded, run the installation file. If you have difficulty downloading, you can
Install the program.
There should be no problems installing the program. Follow the instructions below. If you have any problems with the installation, you can ask them in the comments to this article!
So, if you did everything according to the instructions, the program should start automatically. In the future, you will be able to find the program shortcut on your desktop.
Overview of the main menu of the program.
The program has many advantages, but there is one BIG disadvantage - the music! Let's turn it off.
To do this, click on the settings button in the upper right corner and reduce the music volume using the slider.
Settings
The left column of the main menu shows the color palette. Pay attention to the two green arrows at the top. They allow you to switch between color columns.
In the lower left corner are drawing tools. Notice the test tube that you can use to mix the colors in the palette on the right. To do this, simply point the test tube at the colors and drag them onto the palette.
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