Kazza the Blank One

I first found out that paint-by-numbers were a thing back in the early eighties.  My best friend at the time, Donna Bonnefin - her brother Paul had been given a set of a collie.  I was amazed and wanted to do one.  So I somehow got a double set (could have been a Christmas or birthday present) and did them.  The brush that came with the set with pathetic, and I was still quite young and my motor skills weren't the best, so I actually did most of them with toothpicks.  I gave one each to my nana and grandmother, where they were displayed until they moved into hostels/nursing homes, at which point I got them back.  Since then I've done several over the years.  I am not creative at all but have great attention to details and patience, so these things work well for me.

So this was the first paint-by-numbers I ever did.  Much of the detail was done with toothpicks but the larger areas and blended areas were done with a brush.  These were oil paints which took *forever* to dry, which meant blending worked really well because both sides were wet.  This one went to nana.

This was the other one in the set - it went to grandma

I'm pretty sure these horses were next.  I was still doing some of the detail in toothpicks, but was a bit better with a brush.

Then I think were these kittens.  Before I left Sydney I was giving things away left, right and centre, and sadly I gave these away too.  I'm actually really regretting it.  I hope the person that got them didn't just chuck em out.  I did at least put my website on the back, just in case...

Then a couple of puppies.  Little bit boring as a very small range of colours.

I did the bears a bit later on in life - maybe around my uni days.

These swan lake ones I did as an adult, but I got super frustrated because a couple of the paints dried up before I finished them.  The first one is missing just some of the dark brown, while the second is missing some of the blues as well.  All the sets so far except the very first two were by Craft House, so was a little disappointed.  They're oil paints too, which means that even though I could probably make up the colours using my latest set, it wouldn't be the same because the new paints are acrylic and dry quite matt, whereas the oils have a nice sheen.

And this is the one I completed just recently (bought it for the summer break a year ago).  I was a bit disappointed in this.  It looked nothing like the box for a start, because the paint-by-numbers was modelled on an actual painting, and this looked really nothing like it.  Plus there were mistakes, including on the face where there were two large areas next to each other with the same number which made it look really dumb, so I improvised a bit.  Another annoying thing was this was the first set I'd done where you had to blend your own colours.  Sure it doubled the available colour palette, but it was really painful to work with.

I'll update this post when I finish my latest set :)

ok here we go.  This took like four months to do - felt like forever!