Toledo artist who created paint-by-numbers pictures dies
Toledo artist who created paint-by-numbers pictures dies
God bless this man! His invention introduced me and my mom to painting. Her first set was ducks on black velvet (still in the family collection), mine was Zorro.
My last excursion into the realm of paint-by-numbers was an exhibit at Utah Valley University’s Woodbury Art Museum where Chad Hardin organized a show called HEROES AND VILLAINS: HOW MYTH MADE COMICS. Artists were asked to draw a series of panels depicting mythic characters and their evolution into modern day comic book heroes. Each panel was enlarged to 4’x6′ and printed on canvas. Chad had a professional colorist make color guides utilizing a palette that was matched to paint markers.
Then the magic happened.
Visitors were handed the color guides and markers and invited to paint the canvases. When I attended the opening reception, most were only partially completed, but the results were stunning. Whole families would “adopt” a canvas and Mom, Dad and the kids would spend hours transforming black & white drawings into full color paintings. it was the most successful show in the museum’s history and there’s talk of taking it on the road to other museums and maybe even a comic con.
Dan Robbins deserves a big THANK YOU from everyone who wished they could paint and found a way to do it by the numbers.
Mike