How to Cover the Numbers on Paint by Numbers

Somebody new to the hobby asked r/paintbynumbers the question every beginner gets to: how do you cover the numbers? The dark colours were fine. The light shades weren't.

The replies gave the usual answers. More coats, white paint or a marker over the number before you paint the cell. Nobody mentioned a light.

That's the first rung of a ladder with three. The top rung ends the second coat for a lot of colours. It's the one beginners get told to avoid, because it hides the numbers completely and needs a light behind the canvas to bring them back.

The quick fix: a white pen on the number

Blank out each number before you paint its cell. One reply uses an acrylic paint pen like the Uni Posca white marker and lets it dry fully before any paint goes on. In another thread a reply names the same pen and says it hides everything.

A pen is for a number here and there. The painter who started that thread, asking whether whiting out a canvas counts as cheating, had tried one. It covers the texture of the primer, so the patch still shows, and sometimes the number does too.

Their fallback was white gesso on each number, a batch at a time. Then they'd forget which number was which and hold a light behind the canvas to read them again. That accident is the top rung.

Clear gesso or white gesso?

Gesso is the primer painters brush onto a canvas before the colour goes on. The beginner threads recommend it, and in three separate ones the advice is the same: clear gesso, not white, get the clear one.

Clear gesso is the beginner default, and it covers nothing. It gives the paint a smoother surface and leaves the numbers visible through it, which is the whole reason it's the safe buy. One reply in a later thread spells out the other half: clear won't cover the numbers, and white needs a light board.

White gesso is opaque, so it hides the print. That's what the two rungs below want, and it's why a beginner who buys it by mistake ends up staring at a blank canvas.

Neither colour rescues a cheap kit. One painter who uses white calls it no magic medium: it makes things a little easier, and the paint is the biggest factor. Another tried gesso and didn't find a difference, saying the cheaper the kit, the more coats every number needs whatever you do.

The middle route: a thin white wash

White gesso thinned down and brushed over the whole canvas sits between the pen and the light. One painter dry-brushes it on as a wash. It knocks back the bold numbers and lines, so they often don't need a white pen at all. Two coats where there's a lot of light colour, an hour to dry, and the numbers still readable without a light.

Another waters it down and does two thin layers, one horizontal and one vertical. It blurs the print a little, so take a clear photo of the canvas before the first coat.

The limit is the same painter's. The wash doesn't fully cover the lines and numbers, so cheaper paints still struggle over it. The wash suits a painter who wants fewer pen marks and can live with some.

A reply in the cheating thread would mix white gesso with clear, having heard that on its own it works too well.

White gesso and a light pad: one coat, numbers gone

Working too well is the point of the top rung. Cover the canvas in white gesso until the numbers vanish. Slide a light pad underneath and they come back. They're the pads sold for diamond painting, and one reply already owned one from a year of that.

I use white gesso on the canvas to cover the lines and numbers. The light pad reveals them so I can paint. Makes all the difference.

u/Shaylutt, in r/paintbynumbers

The painter who started a light-board thread put on one coat of undiluted white gesso with a board behind the canvas. Less patchy, less streaky, the numbers almost gone, and the kit going faster than their others. Later kits got three or four coats, a wall of white, sanded smooth before painting. Their paint now goes on in one coat for a lot of colours, and three at most on dark ones that cover unevenly.

The cheating-thread painter uses equal parts white and clear gesso with a tracing board behind it. Twenty-odd replies, and nobody called it cheating. One had done the same and calls it fine, though a bit of extra work.

It carried a cheap kit too. A painter had layered white paint and pale blue over the numbers and could still see through them. With white gesso and a light they only need one layer.

Their catch is the light itself. With it on, it's hard to tell where some colours are going, so a line doesn't always get covered by the colour next to it.

Yellow can still want a second coat. The painter in the quote above may need a second layer on it, though the white layer mostly stops that.

Which light pad for paint by numbers?

The buyers' reasons line up.

• Size. You don't need a big one: move a smaller pad to the area you're painting. The light-board painter went large so the canvas never has to move. The person who started the quoted thread went large too, and picked one thin enough to sit under a framed canvas on a tabletop easel.
• Brightness levels. The light-board painter picked one with different light levels, for more or less backlight. It has one light colour only, brightness adjustable but not warmth, which matters if a cool white gives you a headache.
• A cord. The light-board painter chose a corded pad so there's nothing to charge and nothing to die halfway through a session. It came with clips to hold the canvas on.
• Weight, if you hold it up. A big pad held in one hand for a whole session gets burdensome after a while, so prop it against a chair.

Paint drips land on the pad, so the painter in the quote lays a sheet of acrylic from a picture frame over it first.

Climb the ladder in order. The white marker handles a kit with a few stubborn numbers. The whole-canvas trick is for the painter who's sick of second coats on every pale cell. It takes a bottle of white gesso, one coat, and a small pad moved around under the canvas. Buy the clear gesso as well if the smoother surface appeals, and know that it hides nothing.