by *robertsloan2

Most of the products mentioned in this article are available at Dick Blick or ASW (Art Supply Warehouse), which is a subsidiary of Jerry’s Artarama. My first lesson in getting good artist grade supplies for cheap came with a Dick Blick mail-order catalog back in 1990, and a discount flyer from the now-vanished mail-order house United Art and Education Supply. I wound up buying a 120 color Prismacolor (Premier) set for $37 on United’s loss leader flyer and learned to stop shopping in physical art stores except to test supplies or look in the Clearance bin.

Mail order has a lower overhead. Any online art supply company will have better prices than list prices in stores for exactly the same materials. Waiting a week or two to get the package will sometimes save as much as 50% on precisely the same supplies. Because I take my time with it and plan ahead, I sign up for as many free catalogs as I can find and compare sale prices on things I know I want, especially for large purchases. Blick rates tops for customer service, ease of searching and everyday pricing, but the sale items at ASW are often deeper discounts and they sometimes have items Blick doesn’t.

Blick also has another advantage that makes it useful as a research site. They rate the supplies they carry, listing them as artist grade or student grade, and will add detailed descriptions including lightfastness and toxicity. Even if I don’t buy an item from Blick, usually I’ll look it up there to find out more about what I’m getting.

With any artist grade supplies, look at the Clearance pages at Blick and other online suppliers. Many times, expensive gift sets will be discontinued and drop to ludicrously low prices. I got a $180 list price Clearance discontinued Winsor & Newton Winton Oils set in a nice table easel for $45 in 2004, and other expensive mediums often turn up there -- but check pricing against the supplies in the set bought separately, there are some foolers too.

That said, here are some price leaders in various dry mediums I’ve tried in person. All are artist grade unless I mention otherwise. Because I do sometimes sell my art, I like to ensure that everything I do is on at least acid-free paper or substrate, and that the mediums I use are reasonably good quality so that the buyer isn’t looking at a good artwork fading a year after they paid good money for it.

Colored Pencils
Koh-I-Noor “rogresso” woodless colored pencils are the absolute top combination of price, value and quality. Artist grade woodless colored pencils, they are heavy in the hand and a little short, but last very long and need less sharpening. Under $10 at online suppliers for a 24-color set, they’re close to the price range for children’s pencils -- but nearly as soft as Prismacolor Premier. Progressos hold a very sharp point, do not crumble or suffer internal breakage and can be used like Art Stix to cover broad areas. Their only disadvantage is the short 24 color range. Packaging is a sturdy cardboard sleeve with two very heavy black plastic drawers that hold the pencils securely, more compact and secure than many tins or cardboard boxes. I think of these as essential for colored pencil artists because they can be used alone or combined with a larger set to fill in broad areas and conserve the more expensive artist pencils.

Dick Blick Studio colored pencils are artist grade, come in a 72 color range and reasonably priced at $49 for the 72 color set. Softness is between Faber-Castell Polychromos and Prismacolor Premier. Cut a piece of thin foam or white flannel to fit inside the tin if you buy these or any colored pencils tin that does not include a thin foam pad to rest on the pencils, otherwise they’ll jump out of their slots when the tin is moved, bang into each other and get internal breakage.

Derwent Coloursoft is new, slightly softer than Prismacolor Premier and available in a 72 color range for $49.43 at Blick. For a big set of soft pencils these are great, and most of the Derwent pencils can be tested in sets of 6 before investing in a large set. Prismacolor Verithin colored pencils are hard colored pencils that hold a very sharp point -- but they are actually artist grade, it’s the binder that’s different. With a little work they are an inexpensive alternative to Prismacolor Premier in a maximum range of 36.

Check eBay for sets of colored pencils from bulk suppliers, this is the cheapest source I have seen for Prismacolor Premier especially. If you don’t trust eBay suppliers, look for sales on Prismacolors and other artist grade brands. I am collecting master sets of all the major artist brands because most of the large sets have unique hues, even if the color name is the same, so my range expands anytime I add a bargain like ASW’s Derwent Artist Pencils 120 color set in a wood box.

My Derwent wood box was on sale for $99 when I got it, comparable or less than tins of many other brands’ 120 color sets. If you want a fancy wood box set, I’d recommend that one -- the box is particularly nice too, with velveteen clamped slots that hold the pencils solidly and foam strips to keep them from rolling, two removable trays with handles inside a rich cherry-stain finish box. This is the classy living room set if you like having your colored pencils presentable for company.

eBay also often has large odd lots of colored pencils. If you use them copiously and don’t care about which artist grade brands you pick up, these bargains can be very cost effective. ASW carries full range large sets of some brands that Blick only carries in smaller sets, check around.

Watercolor pencils
The most cost effective watercolor pencils are not the cheapest: Cretacolor Aqua Monolith and Derwent Aquatone are woodless watercolor pencils. Like the Koh-I-Noor Progressos, wastage is minimal because there’s no wood casing -- but woodless watercolor pencils have even less waste since you can keep the shavings in separate little containers and turn them into watercolor by adding water. ASW carries the full range 72 color tin and sometimes puts it on sale. Blick has individual open stock replacements as well.

General’s Kimberley classic watercolor pencils are good quality and cheap, the Classic set is a little higher but may have higher quality pencils. Derwent Watercolour Pencils comes in a 72 color range under $60 at Blick, for a large range. Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer are available in 120 colors but I haven’t tried them yet. Prismacolor Watercolor are reasonable at under $30 for the 36 color full range.

Derwent Inktense and Derwent Graphitints are special effects watersoluble colored pencils that are not available from other manufacturers. Both have a maximum range of 24 colors in a nice tin, add a foam or flannel pad to protect them. Inktense is a bargain because it will also substitute well for a set of colored inks. Scrape the points into water for liquid ink, waterproof when dried. Inktense colors are extremely brilliant and concentrated. Graphitints have a silvery grayish graphite sheen and are barely colored when used dry, more brilliant but still muted when used wet. Watch for sales on these or for when sample pencils are given away with other Derwent products.

Pastels, soft and hard.

Loew-Cornell soft pastels are made from the finest pigments and materials, and come at student or scholastic level prices anywhere I find them. While they are not usually available in open stock replacements, my 72 color ‘wood box’ set was under $30 on sale. The box is veneer laminate with wood molding on the sides, one-layer so it’s easy to handle with thick foam padding and a loose foam pad on top, all my sticks arrived unbroken from ASW.

Yarka soft pastels come in unfinished wood boxes or cheaper student packaging. Foam-padded wood boxes are worth the price to preserve delicate pastels. Yarka adds gray fillers and mutes the colors in the sticks rather than producing pure-pigment brilliant hues. The resultant range is wonderful for doing portraits, the range of earth tones is incredible at a dirt-low price. Yarka offers a wood box set of 185 sticks in 130 unique colors . Moving some of the duplicates and filling it out with select brilliant colors from other artist grade brands could create a huge wood box set for the professional pastelist at a fraction of the cost.

Rembrandt and Sennelier are the two price leaders on open stock soft pastels, at $2.06 and $2.05 a stick respectively, both have excellent ranges and all of the brilliant colors Yarka doesn’t have.

Of the various brands of pastel pencils for detailing, Cretacolor and Carb-Othello are more versatile because they also respond to a wash like watercolor pencils. I mostly use them dry, but it’s nice to know I can extend my watercolor range.

Keep in mind that you can also get excellent quality artist grade supplies like pastels at yard sales and on Freecycle sometimes, because pastels are a medium that people either love or hate. Many artists will try soft pastels and pass on a used set if they don’t like the medium, usually to an artist friend. Sometimes hobbyists let go of used supplies at flea markets, yard sales and other secondhand sources, so bargain-hunting offline can include visiting plenty of yard sales. Half-used or nearly-new sets of pastels seem to turn up often compared to other supplies, that and partially used sets of oils or acrylics -- and oil pastels, though student grade oil pastels are so cheap it’s hardly worth the trouble.

There’s one huge bargain at the upper end of expensive supplies: Sennelier’s full range 525 color wood box set is currently $959 at Blick... and retails at $3,400. I will eventually purchase that monster set, but I’ll get it online when I do. If you want to try Sennelier pastels in a smaller set first, the 80 stick half-stick set is the cheapest per-stick price for a sampler set, and the 10-stick half stick Blue Notes set has a perfect range for monochrome blue pastel paintings that could pay for larger Sennelier sets.

On anything that comes in large sets, I calculate the price per stick or pencil in each size of set and compare with the open stock replacement price of the supply. This can reveal some unexpected bargains like the Sennelier 80 half-stick bargain, enough that I’ll wait till I want to put $56 into another pastels set before I try it.

Oil Pastels

Loew-Cornell is the price leader again, with a 60 color thin cardboard box with internal tray for about $7 and change in the stores. That set is $5.14 at Blick, so if you’re ordering other supplies, you might as well get it online. A 72 stick wood box set is available at ASW for about $20-$25 depending on whether it’s on sale. Other brands like Sakura Cray-Pas, Pentel and Gallery will also be very cheap for sets of 12, 24 or 36. All seem comparable in price and quality.

These are listed as student or scholastic grade, I have not tried artist grade oil pastels like Sennelier or Holbein due to cost. But unlike some student supplies, their quality seems consistently high and I haven’t had problems with fading or degrading over time with Loew-Cornell oil pastels or the art I did with them.

Of the watersoluble oil pastels, Blick carries Portfolio Series Watersoluble Oil Pastels. They only come in a range of 24, but the nontoxic, brilliant, creamy and opaque oil pastels handle exactly like Caran d’Ache Neopastel II, the artist grade watersolubles that I had back in New Orleans. The large sticks dissolve easily when wet. Great for face and body painting, they clean off with ordinary soap and water unlike theatrical makeup, blend easily, and are completely nontoxic and safe for children. So if you like doodling on yourself or your toddlers, the 24 color pack is $7.23 at Blick.

Pencils and Sketch Materials

General’s Kimberley is the absolute price leader in graphite art pencils and many other kinds of drawing pencils. Look for rock-bottom priced drawing kits like the #10 Drawing Set, which has ten artist grade graphite pencils, a good metal sharpener and kneaded eraser in a flimsy cardboard sleeve and delicate plastic tray. Move the supplies into a dollar store children’s pencil box when the packaging gets too ratty. They are also an excellent source for charcoal and sanguine drawing crayons. They even have their own ebony pencils.

Derwent Drawing Pencils used to be available only in six earth tones, the range has expanded to 24 and these super-soft, opaque, creamy drawing pencils in muted colors are especially good for landscape drawing. Like other Derwent specialty pencils, they’re unique and worth watching out for on sale. They blend well with colored pencils, especially Prismacolor or Derwent Coloursoft.

Conte crayons are an expensive but unduplicatable art supply. Other sanguine drawing crayons don’t have their particular texture, dustlessness and control, so they’re worth buying online. Stores charge list for them. Colored Conte crayons have some advantages over other thin square-stick hard pastels like Nupastel, they still have the same Conte texture and blend wonderfully, a small set can produce very dramatic results and the sticks wear down slowly. Watch for sales at Blick and ASW.

Papers and Substrates

I always use acid free artist paper or archival substrates. One inexpensive alternative to colored art paper is to save the centers of matboards you cut to mount other artworks. If you know a local frame shop, ask what they do with their scrap matboard. Very often I got large pieces of museum quality matboard and specialty boards along with lots of good neutral colored pieces to draw on or mat small pieces with, because the framing shops in the French Quarter set their scrap out on the sidewalk for Quarter artists to pick through and salvage. In other areas, you may have to actually inquire to get these incredible freebies.

Blick has recently upgraded the core of their canvas boards -- the inexpensive, handy alternative to stretched canvas. Unless you specifically want the look of stretched canvas for a painting, canvas boards are a lot cheaper even buying in stores. Blick now uses an archival core board under the canvas which has a high concentration of recycled post-consumer waste and is made from renewable resources. Tree-free canvas boards and unlike many organic or tree-friendly products, it’s still just as cheap as they used to be. I consider Blick’s canvas boards fit to sell paintings or drawings on. They can be used for oils, acrylics, any wet mediums and a friend of mine has done some interesting pieces in watercolor pencil on them. They are particularly great for oil pastel paintings, so if you want dramatic paintings on the super cheap, get Loew-Cornell oil pastels and do something with a splash on a Blick canvas board. Or pick up canvas boards at your local art store -- it’s higher, but the product is so cheap you can pay for the convenience of getting it when you go.

Canvas pads are another bargain for the painter, especially the miniaturist who wants to sell or trade ACEOs. An inexpensive canvas pad can be marked up into numerous ACEO sized areas with a little matting room around them, 2 1/2” x 3 1/2” and each could be sold on eBay and bid up comparable to larger artworks depending on style and skill. ACEO sized canvas boards are available on a sublink listed at ACEO but I was unable to find the exact link. The maker’s eBay ID is sharksyardsale.

Colored art paper is available in sheets or pads. I personally like Canson Mi-Tientes because that’s what was available in the art store in the French Quarter where I sold street portraits, but I was happy to find out it’s now available in inexpensive pads for scrapbookers! Blick carries three themed 5-color pads -- Heritage (darks), Neutrals and Brights, with fifteen excellent colors for colored pencil or pastels on tinted ground, for $5.35. There are also 24-sheet tape-bound pads at $4.39 for the 9 x 12” pad and $7.48 for the 12” x 16” pad if you work larger. List price on the 19” x 25” sheets is $2.20, but they’re only $1.37 each if you want to choose your colors.

Canson Ingres paper is a little lighter and a little less expensive per sheet, but also dyed in the pulp and lightfast. There are other good quality colored art paper pads like Strathmore 300 Series pad, $2.99 for a 40 sheet 9” x 12” pad or the higher priced Strathmore Artagain assorted pad for $4.20 -- the 300 series colored art paper pad is the price leader, but I didn’t like the texture or color assortment as much. You may prefer it, that’s individual taste. Fabriano Tiziano is a little more expensive at $1.51 a sheet but also excellent. I use a lot of tinted art paper, because it’s a bargain in another way.

When you use pastels or colored pencils on a colored ground, you use less of your pencils. You can use a midtone paper to become the midtone of your drawing and get very dramatic effects with less time and less expense. This isn’t as big a problem with pastels for using up supplies, but it chews into colored pencils like they’re candy.

ASW and Blick sometimes put Stonehenge and other 100% rag drawing papers on sale, including an inexpensive little 5” x 7” pad of white Stonehenge that’s good for trying this fine, smooth, high quality drawing paper.

Blick carries its own house brand of both 90lb student watercolor paper and 140lb studio watercolor paper, a price leader for sheets unless one of the other brands is on sale. Watch for sales. Blick 90lb student watercolor paper goes on sale for 18 cents a half sheet and can easily be used to fill out orders of one or two sheets of a more expensive paper or board -- and it is excellent drawing and multimedia paper too. Partial-rag or acid-free pulp watercolor papers are often only available in cold press (Not) surface.

I look for bargains in watercolor paper by what’s on sale at the time, unless I pick up Blick’s. Winsor & Newton Cotman Pads sometimes go on sale at deep discount, so do Canson Montval watercolor blocks.

Arches 100% cotton rag watercolor paper goes on sale more often than most high end brands and at deeper discounts. I love Arches paper. I like it in blocks, because of my habits, but the sheets and pads get discounts too. If you like stretching your watercolor paper and want to stock up for a long time, you can save money by buying Arches paper in 10 yard rolls -- the rolls are 44 1/2” or 51” wide, so the number of sheets per roll you get is a lot more than expected -- figure at least two sheets per yard and there will be some spare sheets left over when you do the geometry. Arches comes in Hot press, Cold (Not) Press and Rough, priced by the weight of the paper and size of sheet or block.

Painting

Oils are expensive however you buy them. Look in Clearance and try to find starter sets and gift sets that have been discontinued, as well as surfing the sale catalogs for loss leaders. Especially check the size of tubes in gift and student sets though, because some sets have big 37 ml tubes, but some apparent bargains may have very small tubes to start with.

Acrylics, I moved up to Artist grade with Winsor & Newton Finity because the price ran lower than some student grade tubes of acrylics. They’re excellent and pigment-rich, but I haven’t tried many brands of acrylics so I’ll leave it there -- look for Clearance sets. Blick has a reasonably priced house brand of acrylics in tubes and jars too. Liquitex Basics comes in 12, 24 and 36 color sets of medium-small 21ml student grade (good student grade) tubes, so if you want to try a variety of pigments, a Basics set could be just the thing before investing in large tubes, to know which colors you like.

Watercolors have several super bargains available online. ASW carries Marie’s Transparent, Chinese or Opaque watercolors in sets of big 21ml tubes for between $5 and $15 on sale, as well as a 50 color set of soft pastels, a $4 set of 50 colors in oil pastels and a similar 18-color tube set of acrylics for a very low price compared to Liquitex Basics. If you do an ASW order, check out all the Marie’s supplies by brand. Marie’s is a brand name like Loew-Cornell or General’s Kimberley with quality supplies at very low prices and then goes on sale on top of those discounts in most seasonal sale catalogs. I’ve tried the 18 color transparent tube watercolors and found those excellent, comparable at least to Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolors. Their only disadvantage is that colors are named by color wheel rather than pigment.

Yarka Student Pan Watercolors are a weird great bargain. Because they are poured rather than extruded, the nontoxic pigments are less damaged and they look the same wet as they do dry. These student colors run cheaper than Crayola sets, with big pans in up to 12 color sets. The Yarka Professional Watercolors pan sets come in three 24 color assortments that have the same quality in full pans, minimal packaging and very low prices for the quantity and quality of pigments and binders -- they are wonderful pan watercolors.

The 12 color Yarka Professional Master Set is under $24 in a beautiful permanent wood case that includes Russian Green, a rich slightly-yellow green that has a value range between nearly-black to as light as you can thin it, a color I grew addicted to as a basic mixing green. Think of something a little more brilliant than Sap Green that gets as dark as Prussian Blue. Replacement pans start at $2.82 for full pans -- a ludicrously low price for artist grade replacement pans. The 24-color full pan sets are $34.99 in three assortments in plastic cases.

Yarka is a Russian import with low overhead and high quality in their own traditional processes. Recently, Blick also added Yarka Professional watercolors in tubes as well, so you can economize by refilling pans from matching tubes or choose your own palette of these big 18ml tubes. They range from $5.39 for a tube of Burnt Umber up to $8.39 for Cadmiums and Cobalt Blue. I haven’t tried the tubes, but I trust their milling processes will still give that “wet matches dry” effect if you prefer tubes to pans.

Gouache. Yarka also takes the low-price prize for good quality opaque watercolor in jars, along with Marie’s 18-tube Opaque set. Yarka Gouache is available in a 12-color jar set with very large jars from ASW. If they dry out from being left open, they do reconstitute with water, a toothpick and some patience, and the jars are big 2 oz. plastic jars. Yarka’s products come with minimal extra packaging, you won’t find extraneous bubble-wrap or flimsy outer boxes.

If you want a giant range of 48 artist grade half pans, ASW puts the 48-color half-pan metal case set of Lukas 1862 watercolors on sale regularly at under $120, versus the comparable range of Schminke Horadam Aquarell for $207.20, list $420. Lukas 1862 are artist grade and wonderful, my set had an extra half pan of a different mineral green substituting for the discountinued Hooker’s Green half pan, but that’s a small inconvenience in a huge bargain.

Pelikan Opaque and Transparent watercolor pan sets are mid-low priced excellent quality sets with very large pans. I prefer Pelikan Opaque pans to any other gouache I’ve tried, partly because the silver pan is the best mixing metallic I’ve found in anything and the set is very convenient. Watch for sales on these sets, they do go on sale perennially. Both types are artist grade, and have interesting cases -- the Transparent case has big water cups that snap on to hold it closed when not in use but is a weird shape that doesn’t always stack well.

Brushes. ASW has frequent deep-discount sales on high quality brushes including Kolinsky sable in several brands. If you’re not ready for Kolinsky sable, or didn’t pick up the oft-repeated Arches Brush and Block sale at Blick, then I’d recommend going to Blick for the Princeton Value Pack brushes. They come in many fibers and combinations of shapes and sizes, and are a great way to find out what your favorite type of brushes are -- stiff or soft, synthetic or natural. I like stiff white synthetic for oils and acrylics, and soft golden taklon for watercolors, watersoluble pencils and gouache.

Cheap sable brushes from stores tend to shed hairs, lose their point and shape rapidly and not be worth the dollar pack. However, Wal-Mart has a $5.99 multi-fiber mixed pack of brushes that’s comparable to the other grab-bag brush packages from Loew-Cornell and had some excellent quality synthetics in the short-handle 50-brush assortment -- and the lousier ones can always be used to paint on glue or masking fluid, extra brushes are never a waste.

Loew-Cornell carries several brush assortments in wraps at very low prices too. I haven’t tried them, but I trust their quality from the other Loew-Cornell products I’ve used.

Hopefully, whatever your medium, I’ve helped you find some of the supplies you need at prices you can afford. Loew-Cornell, Yarka, Portfolio, General’s Kimberley and the Blick house brand products are names you can trust for good quality at very low prices, others are often on sale at far below list price. Even the most expensive supplies come in far below list in mail-order or online order catalogs.