Buy two canvases, not one. This is the single piece of advice worth giving about painting as a couple, and it goes against what every article on the subject says. One canvas shared between two people means one person waiting while the other finishes a region, and it means a disagreement about whether the sky is done. Two canvases at the same table, same evening, same bottle open, is a completely different experience and costs about thirty dollars more.
If you want them to relate to each other, take two kits from the same palette rather than a matching pair. Embrace on the Sea and Coastal Embrace hang together on a wall without being a set.
The kits that are actually about two people
Gustav Klimt The Kiss is the obvious one and deserves its reputation. It is also the hardest thing in this list, because the gold is hundreds of small regions and the faces are tiny. Take the 48 colour version and accept that it is a multi-week canvas, not a Valentine's evening.
Lifelong Lovers and Rural Couple are the quiet ones, two figures and not much else. Sweetheart Soul is the warmest in colour.
For movement rather than stillness there is Fiery Tango, Romantic Ballroom Dancers and Ethereal Dance. The tango is the strongest of those on a wall because it is essentially one red shape against dark, which photographs well and survives being seen from across a room.
Red Dress Dancer is a single figure and belongs here anyway.
The animal ones, which people buy more of
Penguins Love and Goldfish Couple outsell most of the section above, and the reason is that they are funny without being a joke. Both are easy paintings: two clear subjects, simple ground, no faces to get wrong.
Opossum Among the Roses is for the recipient who would find a couple portrait unbearable. Sloth with Roses is in the same register.
Roses without a couple in the frame
If the romance is meant to stay implicit, the Floral & Botanical collection holds ninety kits and several land better than a literal Valentine's subject. Vivid Flora's Embrace, Pink Peony Perfection and Meadow's Embrace are the three that get bought in February.
Stellar Waltz comes from the Space collection and is the one to pick if the word romantic makes the recipient uncomfortable.
The version that beats all of them
A photograph of the two of you, converted into a numbered canvas. Send it through the custom kit page, from $19.95 for twelve by twelve inches and $24.95 for sixteen by twenty. Choose an outdoor photograph in even light rather than an indoor one with a flash, because harsh shadow on a face becomes a hard black region and reads badly.
A wedding photograph works. A photograph from the first year, before anyone had a good camera, works better, because the imperfection stops it looking like a printed portrait.
Dates and prices
This is the part that ruins Valentine's gifts every year. Printing takes one to three business days and delivery seven to fifteen, which means a custom kit ordered on the first of February has no chance. Order a custom canvas by the middle of January. Stock kits ship the same way but without the printing wait, so the last comfortable date for those is around the twenty-fifth.
Twelve by sixteen inches runs $20.95, $28.95 and $38.95 for 24, 36 and 48 colours. Sixteen by twenty is $24.95, $34.95 and $39.95. The Buy 2, Get 1 Free offer applies automatically, which is the argument for the two-canvas plan above: the third one becomes a gift for somebody else.
Shipping is free to the US, Canada, the UK, the EU, Australia and New Zealand with no minimum, and there is a thirty day guarantee with a prepaid return label and a full refund including original shipping.
On painting side by side without getting in each other's way, painting together covers the practical side, and framing and displaying matters more here than usual, since two canvases hung badly look worse than one.
