In memory of Dan Robbins: The creator of paint by numbers

If you have ever asked who invented paint by numbers, the answer is a quietly remarkable man named Dan Robbins. He believed everyone had an artist in them — they just needed a plan to follow. When Dan passed away, we felt we owed him a proper thank-you, because his simple, generous idea is the reason our whole workshop exists. This is our tribute to him, and to the notion that anyone can pick up a brush.

Who invented paint by numbers

Paint by numbers was invented by Dan Robbins, an American commercial artist whose numbered kits swept living rooms across the country and became a genuine phenomenon in the 1950s. He did not set out to change how a nation spent its evenings. He simply believed that the pleasure of painting should not be reserved for people with training — and he was right. Millions of ordinary people, many of whom had never held an artist’s brush, discovered that with a numbered canvas and a little patience, they could make something to be proud of.

Dan died at the age of 93 in Sylvania, Ohio, in 2019, after a series of falls. He lived long enough to see the thing he created dismissed, then rediscovered, then finally treated with the affection it always deserved. We think that is a fitting arc for a man whose whole idea was that art belongs to everyone.

The idea: a lesson borrowed from Leonardo

Where did the concept come from? Dan told the story himself, and it is a lovely one. He recalled that “Leonardo used numbered background patterns for his students and apprentices” — a way of guiding a less experienced hand through a composition the master had already worked out. That small historical detail lodged in Dan’s imagination. If a numbered plan was good enough to train Renaissance apprentices, why not use the same principle to hand the joy of painting to anyone at all?

It is a democratic, warm-hearted idea at its core. The hard part of painting — deciding where the light falls, which colours sit next to which, how to build a face out of a hundred small shapes — is already solved for you. What remains is the calm, absorbing, deeply human part: filling it in, region by region, and watching a picture appear under your own hand.

The first canvas — and the rejection

Great ideas rarely arrive fully formed, and Dan’s was no exception. His very first attempt was an abstract still life, which he brought to his boss, Max Klein. Klein was not impressed — he rejected it. The abstract subject was too strange, too far from what everyday families wanted to hang on their walls.

But Klein did not reject the underlying concept, and that made all the difference. Dan went back and reworked his approach toward the friendly, recognisable scenes — landscapes, still lifes, cottages and horses — that people actually longed to paint. That willingness to listen, adjust, and try again is a small lesson we take to heart in our own workshop every single day. The first version of anything is rarely the right one; the good stuff comes from the revision.

Dismissed by critics, kept by a museum

For years, the art establishment did not know what to make of paint by numbers. Critics initially dismissed the kits as mass-produced, unserious, the very opposite of “real” art. To some, the idea that a factory-printed canvas and a row of numbered paint pots could sit anywhere near the word art was faintly ridiculous.

History, gently, disagreed with them. In time the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History recognised paint by numbers as a genuine piece of the country’s cultural story — a democratic craze that put brushes in the hands of millions and changed what “making art” was allowed to mean. What the critics saw as a punchline, the historians came to see as a moment worth preserving. We find that turn of events quietly moving: the thing that was mocked for being for everyone was, in the end, honoured precisely because it was for everyone.

A quiet legacy we carry forward

We named our workshop Our Paint By Numbers because we are, unashamedly, standing on Dan Robbins’s shoulders. His conviction — that anyone can be made an artist — is the beating heart of what we do. The only thing we have changed is the subject. Where Dan gave people cottages and mountain streams to paint, we hand you the picture you love most: your dog, your grandmother, the view from a trip you never want to forget.

That is the small, sincere upgrade of the last seventy years. Thanks to Dan’s original plan and today’s tools, you can now turn your own photograph into a numbered canvas. A face needs more care than a landscape — it takes around 36 to 48 colours to render skin and expression honestly — but the promise is the same as it was in his day: follow the numbers, take your time, and something true appears on the canvas.

Every one of our kits arrives ready to paint: a numbered linen canvas, pre-mixed acrylic paints, three brushes, and a printed reference sheet, with free paint for life if a pot ever runs low. Shipping is tracked worldwide, with the cost shown at checkout. But the real inheritance in the box is not the materials. It is Dan’s idea — that the artist was in you all along.

If you have never tried it, we would gently suggest starting the way so many did in the 1950s: with a scene you simply enjoy looking at. Browse our paint by numbers for adults collection, or read the classic history of custom paint by numbers to see how Dan’s kits grew into a national craze. Either way, you are picking up a brush he set down for you.