“Oil” Paint-by-Numbers: A Short Saga
A challenging Mother’s Day present that ended up being a belated gift weeks after the first brushstroke.
First of all, the gift of being able to write is something I attribute to my father putting me in 900 classes for almost everything. I abuse commas and will someday drive an editor to madness. His innovative purchase of certain software and sending me off to a private high school set off something deep inside. I can’t leave my mom out of this mix, however. An aspiring artist with a gorgeous sketch hand, she was a pre-k teacher in Chicago who was right on the cusp of returning to art school when she sadly passed away.
From her, I know I get the eccentricities of being an “artist”. Where she dabbled in interpretive dance (in high school) and geometric sketches of birds, I reflect and feverishly write unfinished stories. I have poetry books yet to be self-published. As for painting….
Well…
I can’t paint very well, but sure I’ll wear a beret and hiss about free-form poetry over tepid coffee. My sketches have always been questionable. We won’t discuss the period between 2001 and 2004 with the curvaceous OC catgirls and the terrible hidden GeoCities stories. There are at least two paramours who might remember something, and they’re both gonna get a size 12.5 Nike upside the head if they speak on it.
For Mother’s Day, I decided I was gonna go in for a double whammy: a cute tea cup and a paint-by-numbers kit. The PBN kit idea had been rolling around my head for almost a year. I figured that most companies would understand that their customer base was not full of accomplished artists and would take pity on us with canvases that wouldn’t cause too much stress. Y’know, novice painter here. I took one class in high school that required intensive work on a piece. I’ve had classes in middle school that had some elements of painting, but it was children’s work. You expected it to suck a bit. (Save for like 60% of my class who excelled waaay above my tiny fruit drawings.)
The Process
Quite a few reviews said to saturate the picture sent in because the coloring ends up dull otherwise. I ignored this. They were right! This is the original picture.
Their little preview pic is below. When I saw the preview, I froze. Was this going to come out odd and dull? And why did I look so much…lighter? The detailing was a lot less…detailed. Why did my aunt’s hair look so ashy? At least they kept Nana intact. Since she was the focal point, I thought that was very symbolic. I understood that the effect was supposed to be oil painting adjacent, but some of the details seemed to be rendered poorly or just flat-out thrown together. Nothing against this company, but the details like my aunt’s locs and my Prince necklace were sort of pooped on in the process. One of my aunt’s eyelids was gray. Maybe it was a “me thing”, but there were parts of the interpretation that made me feel a little tense.
From the start of May until about 2 weeks ago, I set myself up in a corner of my room. Desktop canvas, LED light, my bad eyes, and several brushes led the way. The company supplied the tiny pots of paint. I took pics of my progress and created a little montage of my time with the artwork. My shaky, fat fingers and I went to work for hours. I really thought that I would be able to paint a 16X20 canvas in a week! Once I realized it wasn’t going to be ready, I took my time. I wanted the love and care I felt in my heart to be reflected in the piece.
Mistakes! I know I’ve Made a Few…
I’ll just list the mistakes. I made a-plenty.
1:Over-working myself and becoming a little obsessed with completing the piece in time, which led to lots of shaky strokes and dabs. (This also led to a lapse in real-world stuff, because I was stressing out.)
2:Painting parts of sections and then forgetting what number I was using. (This happened a lot due to the intricate lines and curves of the piece. I also painted over sections and forgot the numbers, which led to careful dabs of the colors I thought belonged. There was a reference sheet — which was folded to death thanks to my constant sectioning so I would not screw up.)
3:“Personal artistic licensure” — aka, “I think I have just enough talent and color coordination to paint something the way I think it should be.” This ended up being the one thing that made me paint over my chest to insert MY interpretation of the Prince necklace I wore in the picture. It also had me thinking I could “fix” the color issue of my skin in the reference photo and canvas.
I felt like those folks made my skin much lighter than it was. I fought with my forehead before giving up and fixing it back. It’s a focal point on the piece because I put SO. MUCH. PAINT. on that section, trying to fix it!!! The spirit of the oil painting was very much there with all those intricate lines and sections. It became evident once more of the piece had been painted.
4:Strokes instead of dabs. Some parts of the piece were TINY. Some parts had numbers that were very hard to read under the LED lighting. With phone in hand, I had to maneuver lighting to properly see. This made me a bit impatient and frustrated. There were some moments calling for a dab versus a stroke. The dabs kept color and shading steady. The strokes helped save time, but you can see where it got shaky. This was especially true in teeny corners where shading and detailing were used to accentuate shadows and points of distance.
5:Not taking my time. My brand of frustration often creates a hint of chaos. At one point in the process, I accidentally hit the painting with a weird sideways stroke of pot #14 — a charcoal black color that added about 40 more minutes of paint time. I had to go back, carefully scan the reference sheet, get the colors, and daaaaaaab the black out. The lack of breaks combined with my drive to finish early also made the project less fun. I walked away and took some days off. I did not want the bad energy in that painting. It was such a sacred moment to paint. You have to take your time. No matter how dedicated you are, no matter how steady your hands — trust me — take your time.
Results!
When all was said and done, my aunt was touched. All that fighting with myself paid off. I’m stuck with pots of paint I won’t use, additional acrylic paints I ordered *just in case* I wanted to get fancy and freeform, and painter’s apparatus for those moments when I think I’ve got my mother’s gift. All the stress and obsession were worth it. I wanted to give my aunt something that reflected the love and joy in my heart when I think about all the times the Williams women went out and wore our generations with pride. How those two women in the picture held me up in the darkest hours of my life. How my aunt is still holding my crazy self down to this day. The usual candy and card just weren’t gonna do it!
Granted you have to…er…lean back and cross your eyes a bit to get the full effect, it doesn’t look half bad. Just don’t get close to it. For all it lacks in the spirit of the so-called oil painting, there’s a rich history of a loving matriarch and the two women in her life whom she cultivated and loved on with her own two hands. She left a legacy of hard workers and scrubbers. (She’d kill me if she saw my organized piles!!)
Would I use this company again? Yes! I would go for a smaller canvas with a highly saturated picture. Despite the strong frustrations, I had a great time challenging myself. It was an affordable gift that became a wonderful addition to our home.
About the Author(ess): Veronica is an aspiring writer who evaluates ads for Telus AI International. When she isn’t on the hunt for her next Medium topic, you can find her cackling away at pet videos or taking macro shots of flowers. In her wildest dreams, she’s already a NY Times Bestseller and her student loans are but a distant memory. [Contact Info]
