Practical & gifting

How to Download and Print a Blank Paint-by-Numbers Canvas

Export any Wabihana painting as a printable blank canvas — the numbered outline plus a palette key — as a PDF or PNG on A4 or A3. A step-by-step guide to downloading and printing it cleanly.

By The Wabihana team5 min read

Wabihana is built for painting on screen, but sometimes you want the thing in your hands — a printed outline you can fill in with real acrylics, hang on the fridge, or hand to a child at the kitchen table. That’s what the blank canvas download is for: it exports your painting as the bare numbered outline, ready to print on ordinary paper. This guide covers how to download it, whether to choose PDF or PNG, A4 or A3, and how to get a clean print.

What a “blank canvas” actually is

The blank canvas is your painting with the paint taken away: the black region outlines and the little grey numbers, on white, with a colour key. It’s the same numbered map you paint on screen, laid out for a printer instead of a display. Nothing is filled in — that’s the point. You (or whoever you’re printing it for) provide the colour, matching each number to the palette on the key.

How to download it

The blank canvas comes from any painting already in your gallery, so convert your photo first if you haven’t. Then:

Open your gallery and find the painting you want to print.
Tap the ⋮ menu on its tile and choose “Download blank”.
Pick a format (PDF or PNG) and a paper size (A4 or A3), then download.

The file saves ready to print — the PDF already laid out to your chosen paper, with a separate palette page so you always know which number is which colour.

PDF or PNG?

For almost everyone, choose PDF. It’s laid out to the exact paper size with sensible margins and a dedicated palette page, so it prints correctly without any fiddling — open it and hit print. On a larger painting the PDF is paged for you: on A4 you get the canvas plus a palette sheet, and on A3 the canvas is split across two A4 halves (so it still prints on a normal home printer) followed by the palette.

Pick PNG only if you want the raw image — to drop into a document, resize it yourself, or send it somewhere that can’t take a PDF. It’s a single high-resolution image with no page layout, so you’re in charge of scaling it to the paper.

A4 or A3: bigger paper, bigger zones

The paper size decides how physically large each numbered region is. Detailed paintings pack a lot of small zones into the sheet, and on A4 those zones — and their numbers — can get too small to paint comfortably. Printing the same canvas on A3 roughly doubles the area, so every zone and number gets bigger and easier to work with.

Getting a clean print

A blank canvas is only as good as the print, and a couple of printer settings make all the difference.

Works well

Print at 100% / “actual size” — never “fit” or “shrink to fit”
Slightly heavier paper (120gsm+) so paint doesn’t bleed or cockle
A colour print, so the palette key shows the real colours
A3 for detailed paintings, to keep zones and numbers paintable

Avoid

“Fit to page” scaling — it shifts the layout and shrinks numbers
Thin copy paper for anything wetter than pencils
Greyscale printing, which loses the palette key’s colours
Cramming a very detailed canvas onto a single A4 sheet

If you’re painting the printout with real acrylics or gouache, heavier paper (or a light card) keeps it flat and stops the colour bleeding through. For pencils or markers, ordinary printer paper is fine. And if you’d rather paint on a real stretched canvas than on paper, the printout becomes your template — see how to transfer the outline from paper to canvas.

What to do with it

A printed blank canvas is a surprisingly flexible thing. It’s a screen break that keeps the same painting going on paper; a ready-made activity for kids or a group, where everyone paints their own copy; and a lovely low-cost gift — print a portrait of someone’s pet, add a little set of paints, and you’ve made something personal. We talk more about that in the custom gift guide, and about the wider trade-offs of paper versus screen in digital vs physical paint by numbers.

The one thing to plan ahead: detailed paintings that shine on screen can be fiddly on paper, because zoom doesn’t exist off the display. If you know you’ll print, a lower detail level makes a friendlier canvas — see how color count changes difficulty. Otherwise, turn a photo into a painting first, then grab its blank canvas whenever you want to take it off the screen.

Frequently asked questions

How do I download a blank paint-by-numbers canvas?

Open your gallery, tap the ⋮ menu on any painting, and choose “Download blank”. Pick a format (PDF or PNG) and a paper size (A4 or A3), then download. The file saves ready to print, with a separate palette key so you know which number is which colour.

Should I download a PDF or a PNG?

Choose PDF for printing — it’s already laid out to your paper size with margins and a palette page, and it splits larger canvases across pages automatically. Choose PNG only if you want the raw high-resolution image to place in a document or resize yourself.

Should I print on A4 or A3?

A4 is fine for simpler paintings. Choose A3 for detailed ones: the larger sheet roughly doubles the area, so each numbered zone and its number are bigger and easier to paint. The download dialog warns you and suggests A3 when the numbers would be too small on A4.

Why are the numbers on my printed canvas so small?

Detailed paintings pack many small zones onto the page, so their numbers shrink to fit. Print on A3 to enlarge them, or make a lower-detail version of the painting for printing. Very detailed canvases are usually best painted on screen, where you can zoom in.

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