Yes, with one limit. No shop stocks ready-made kits of specific anime characters, so a character or a screenshot needs a custom kit from $19.95, traced from your image into numbered zones. Ready-made kits in anime background style, such as rainy streets and rooftop sunsets, also start at $19.95 and ship today.

Both start at $19.95 at ArtistryByNumbers, with free shipping to the US, Canada, the UK, the EU, Australia and New Zealand and Buy 2 Get 1 Free.

The kits drawn in anime background style

None of these carries a licensed character and none of them pretends to. What they borrow is the background art: cel shading, which means flat areas of color with a hard edge between them instead of a photographic gradient. That is the one style a numbered canvas handles better than the medium it came from, so this group finishes faster and cleaner than a photo-based kit of the same size.

Blossom Station

A rural platform in spring, cherry trees at full bloom, nobody waiting. Start here if it is your first kit in this style: the flat cel-shaded areas are large, the edges are already drawn for you, and pink against blue stays bright even in the 24-colour version.

Rainy Lantern Street

Red paper lanterns down a narrow street at night, wet pavement, one figure under an umbrella seen from behind. Every bright colour gets used twice, once on the sign and once in the reflection below it, which is the whole pleasure of painting this one.

Anime Rooftop Sunset

A girl on a rooftop railing watching the sun drop behind a Japanese city, power lines cutting across the sky. The sky is wide bands of colour, so the big half of the canvas goes quickly and forgives a shaky edge; the rooftops and cables are what you finish with a fine brush.

Anime Umbrella in the Rain

Blue umbrella, wet street at dusk, shop windows doubled in the puddles. Teal and pink throughout. She is walking away from us, so there is no face to get right, which removes the single thing that ruins most character kits.

Anime Cozy Room at Night

A desk by a window, lamp on, plants on the shelves, a cat asleep on the rug, the city lit up outside. Warm light inside against cold blue outside is the contrast the whole painting runs on. This is the one that ends up above a desk rather than in a living room.

Four more belong to the quiet end of the genre, the frames where nothing happens on purpose. Anime Summer Railway Crossing is an empty line through sunflowers under stacked cumulus, and those clouds are a good place to practise close whites and greys. Anime Seaside Railway runs a small green train beside a turquoise sea, sky and water and train as three separate blocks, so it builds fast. Anime Countryside Bus Stop is mostly field and sky across a few evenings. Anime Mountain Village at Dusk puts a pagoda and a pine forest under a purple sky, with lit windows as small yellow shapes that carry the whole canvas.

For something with more going on, Anime Shrine Steps in Spring climbs stone steps through cherry trees to a red torii, hundreds of petal shapes and one unmistakable focal point. Anime Fireworks by the River is a summer festival on a dark sky, which makes every colour on it read from across the room. Anime Floating Islands is the fantasy one, waterfalls spilling off islands into the clouds, loose shapes that stay forgiving for a beginner.

Twelve new original anime scenes

Drawn for this shop rather than lifted from a show, so there is no licence problem and no famous face to get wrong: figures stay small or turn their backs, and the scene does the talking. Same flat cel-shaded zones as the kits above.

• Anime Girl and Black Cat on the Rooftop: a girl and her black cat watching the city from a rooftop.
• Anime Train Window at Sunset: an empty carriage with the sunset sliding past the window.
• Anime Rainy Lantern Alley: red lanterns doubled in a wet alley at night.
• Anime Cherry Blossom School Path: the walk to school under cherry trees in April.
• Anime Sunflower Field: a summer sunflower field under tall clouds.
• Anime Summer Festival Night: festival stalls with fireworks overhead.
• Anime Shooting Star Night: a hillside under a sky full of falling stars.
• Anime Winter Shrine at Night: a snowed-in shrine lit by stone lanterns.
• Anime Christmas Eve Street: a shopping street on Christmas Eve, the December one.
• Anime White Fox in the Bamboo Forest: a white fox spirit between bamboo stems.
• Anime Dragon over the Lake: a long eastern dragon over a mountain lake.
• Anime Samurai under a Red Moon: a lone samurai, seen from behind, under a red moon.

Japanese scenes painted from life

These are photographic rather than cel shaded, so they take longer and ask for a steadier hand. Hung next to the group above they read as one set.

Fuji's Eternity

Mount Fuji with the snowline catching light, the single most recognisable backdrop in Japanese art and the establishing shot of roughly every anime that leaves the city. Mid difficulty: the sky gradient is the part that takes patience.

Serene Koi Pond

Orange and white koi under green water. Small zones, a great many of them. Pick this one if you like slow detailed work rather than big flat areas, and go up to 48 colours, because the fish depend on it.

Cherry Blossom Festival

Sakura in full bloom. Every school anime gets one episode under these trees, and the scene forgives a wobbly edge because the blossom hides it.

Three others sit in the same half of the catalogue. Illuminated Woodland strings lanterns through dark trees and is the closest thing here to a spirit forest, warm rather than bright, which is why it works on a bedroom wall. Moonlit Waters is night water under a full moon, deep blues and one hard light source and very little else, easy to finish and hard to make boring. Cherry Blossom Bridge is the same spring palette with an architectural shape to hang it on.

Two are prints rather than photographs, and that changes how they paint. Great Wave after Hokusai is flat colour with no gradient anywhere, the one seascape in the shop where blending would actively make the result worse. Wave of Flowers rebuilds the same wave out of flowers in a modern palette.

See the anime & Japanese-inspired kits

Size and colour count

The 30 x 30 cm at 24 colours is the $19.95 entry, and it suits a single subject: the cozy room, the umbrella, the bus stop. The 40 x 50 cm is the usual choice at $24.95 for 24 colours, $34.95 for 36 and $39.95 for 48. The 50 x 65 cm runs $29.95, $44.95 and $48.95 and earns its price on the wide ones, the railway crossing and the mountain village.

On a cel-shaded design, 24 colours is a real option rather than a compromise, because the artwork was already drawn in flat areas. On the photographic half, take 36 at least. A sunset gradient split into 24 steps is a harder painting than the same sunset in 48, not an easier one, since the bands are wider and the seams more obvious.

Turning an anime image into a kit that actually works

Not every screenshot converts well. A few things we have learned from the ones people send

• Close crops beat wide shots. A face and shoulders gives the tracing enough room to separate hair, skin and background; a full-body action frame at canvas size turns the face into four zones.
• Bright, evenly lit frames convert better than dark ones. Night scenes lose their whole point when every shadow collapses into one number.
• Higher resolution helps, but composition matters more. A clean 800px still beats a blurry 4K freeze-frame.
• Two characters is usually the ceiling on a standard canvas. Beyond that, go up a size.

Upload your image and we will tell you if it works before anything is printed.

Free shipping to the US, Canada, the UK, the EU, Australia and New Zealand, with no minimum order. Buy two kits and the third is free, applied automatically at checkout.

Prefer a bigger canvas? Our large paint by numbers kits come on 50x65 cm and 60x60 cm canvases, with paints and brushes included.

Anime is one corner of the range. The paint by numbers kits for adults collection lists every theme, best sellers first.