Paint by numbers is a system where a picture is divided into shapes, each marked with a number that corresponds to a particular color. You paint in each shape and ultimately the picture emerges as a finished painting. The paint by numbers approach is often ridiculed as being simplistic, uncreative, and formulaic. I believe it's helpful in getting across the concept that a painting is built up through multiple shapes of color. These shapes often don't make sense individually, nor look like anything "real", but put together as a group they create the image. The next step in developing as a painter is to learn to see such color shapes for yourself, without the aid of a printed diagram. Completing a paint by numbers project helps you learn to analyze a subject and observe areas of color. It helps you move away from focusing on what the finished subject will look like to looking at small areas and what color these should be painted. "Painting by numbers' may not be as egregious a pursuit as one might imagine. Leonardo himself invented a form of it, assigning assistants to paint areas on a work that he had already sketched out and numbered." A Painting by Numbers kit will include a brush, little pots of paint in however many colors you'll need, and a printed outline of the picture. It may not look like much paint, but it should be sufficient paint for completing the picture. It's tempting to paint so that you finish a section of the picture at a time, but that will necessitate a lot of brush washing and waste paint. Rather paint one color at a time, from the largest areas of this color to the smallest. Working from the top of the painting down helps prevent accidentally disturbing wet paint. By starting with the larger ones you'll be more practiced using the brush and paint by the time you get to the smallest areas, which can be quite fiddly to paint. Painting by Numbers is an excellent exercise in brush control. You know exactly where the paint should go and so can focus entirely on getting it down there, and only there. Having the brush control to paint accurately up to an edge or specific point is a crucial skill that every aspiring artist needs to develop. You'll use it, for example, when painting a background behind an object, adding color in an eye, or darkening a shadow of a vase, and wherever you want a hard edge on an object.
