Paint by number
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For other uses, see Paint by number (disambiguation).
"Color by numbers" redirects here. For the Culture Club album, see Colour by Numbers. For the Freeze the Atlantic EP, see Colour by Numbers (Freeze the Atlantic EP). For the Swedish art installation, see Colour by Numbers (art installation).
Paint by number or painting by numbers kits are self-contained painting sets, designed to facilitate painting a pre-designed image. They generally include brushes, tubs of paint with numbered labels, and a canvas printed with borders and numbers. The user selects the color corresponding to one of the numbers then uses it to fill in a delineated section of the canvas, in a manner similar to a coloring book.
Look up paint-by-numbers in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
The kits were invented, developed and marketed in 1950 by Max S. Klein, an engineer and owner of the Palmer Paint Company in Detroit, Michigan, and Dan Robbins, a commercial artist. When Palmer Paint introduced crayons to consumers, they also posted images online for a "Crayon by Number" version.