It’s easy to picture the painting you’d like to hang in your kitchen. Maybe it’s a vase of yellow flowers against a dark blue wall, or the view from a window in the house where you grew up. The harder part is sitting down with a blank canvas and figuring out how to paint it. Where does the outline go? Which blue should you use? What do you paint first?

Paint by numbers offers a practical starting point. The canvas comes with a design divided into numbered shapes and a set of matching paints. If a shape is marked 6, you fill it with paint number 6. As neighboring shapes take on color, they begin to read as petals, leaves, shadows or sky. You can make a painting at your own table, even if you’ve never drawn a still life or mixed a color yourself.

Start with a subject you’d like to spend time with

There are two ways to begin. The first is to choose an existing design. When you browse popular paint by numbers sets, imagine the painting on your table halfway through. Would you enjoy an evening working across the broad sweep of a landscape, or would you rather finish one small detail at a time? A picture with larger areas of color can be a comfortable first project. A more intricate composition gives you plenty to return to over several sittings.

The second option is to start with a photograph. A custom kit turns your image into a numbered design, so you can paint by numbers from your photo. This is a chance to paint something you’d be unlikely to find in a ready-made collection, like the corner café where you met a friend or your dog asleep in a favorite chair. Look for a photo with one clear subject and enough light to see its features. If the detail you love gets lost when you view the photo at a smaller size, try cropping it before you choose it.

What your first painting session looks like

Clear a spot at the table with good light. Set out the canvas, a cup of water for rinsing your brush and a paper towel for blotting it. Start with one larger shape so you can get a feel for how much paint the brush holds. A little paint on the tip gives you more control along an edge than a loaded brush does.

Suppose you’ve chosen the vase of yellow flowers. You might start with the blue wall behind it, then work on a single bloom. Up close, one petal may contain a patch of cream, a strip of yellow and a small brown shape near the stem. Paint all three, then stand back. What looked like an odd brown mark a moment ago now reads as the place where one petal casts a shadow on another. You’ve just seen how a painter gives a flat shape depth.

What makes the finished painting yours?

The design and palette are prepared for you. The brushwork is yours. As you paint, you decide whether to keep a crisp edge on the lip of the vase or soften the boundary between two petals. You can follow the guide closely while you learn, then give a detail more attention because it catches your eye.

Choose a subject, paint one section and leave the canvas somewhere you can see it the next morning. From the other side of the kitchen, you may notice that the flower you worked on last night is the first thing your eye goes to. And when someone asks where you found the painting, you get to say, “I made it here.”