Art gallery

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, we may receive an affiliate commission.

Watercolor sticks are a great tool for artists who want to add watercolor effects to sketches and drawings. They are somewhere between a watercolor and a pastel, with a good amount of variation among brands. Apply them in a range of ways: Draw dry on dry and then wet your surface with a brush, dip the stick in water as you work, apply dry to wet paper, or even treat these sticks like watercolor pans, using a wet brush to take pigment from the stick and transfer it to paper. Watercolor sticks are sometimes priced better than traditional pans, and they’re highly portable: no palette or brush necessary. If you’re interested in using watercolor sticks for drawing or painting, find our list of recommended options below.

ARTNEWS RECOMMENDS
Winsor … Read the rest

Paint isn’t as permanent as you might think! If you’ve made an error with your acrylics or oils, there is a way to fix it: Pick up a painting scraper. Featuring a sharp blade, this tool makes quick work of dried pigment; you can use it to lift paint off your canvas without ruining the fabric and without having to use any solvents. Scrapers are also great tools for cleaning off your palette and cleaning up your work space. Below, we highlight some of our favorites. 

ARTNEWS RECOMMENDS
RGM Scraper Knife No. 109
Our favorite scraping tool is made to last, comfortable to hold, and pretty inexpensive to boot. Made in Italy, it features an asymmetrical multi-angled blade made of tempered steel that is firmly fitted into a solid wood handle and secured with a brass ferrule. It is beautifully weighted, and the blade is offset so you can maintain … Read the rest

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, we may receive an affiliate commission

Essential to any oil or acrylic painter’s practice is a great palette knife or painting knife. With such tools, artists can combine colors and materials in the process of creating their works. Though originally intended for mixing media, palette knives can also be used to apply paint to canvas, with different sizes and shapes producing different effects. Even watercolorists can use them to scratch into a work. Note that a painting knife, often with a curved neck or handle to keep the artist’s hands away from the painted surface, is technically a different tool and may be best suited for applying pigment to canvas, but painting and palette knives—both the tools and their names—are often used interchangeably. The blades’ edges can be blunt or sharp, allowing a wide range … Read the rest

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, we may receive an affiliate commission

An art subscription box is one of the best gifts you can give yourself or a creative friend. Typically delivered monthly, these kits come with specially curated supplies, whether paints, inks, or paper, to surprise and inspire you. Because everyone’s preferences are different, you likely won’t be in love with every single product you receive every month. Still, subscription boxes are a fun way to try products you might not have used before or even known about. If you’ve ever been overwhelmed by all the choices at a typical art store, these boxes are also a handy way to hone your tastes so you can be more informed the next time you shop in person. Below, find five of our favorite art subscription services that offer the best deals … Read the rest

Known for his abstract compositions, the New York–based artist Ali Banisadr recently described his paintings as “quite encyclopedic” and “trying to gather different fragments of information and knowledge from different sources,” as he told Brooke Jaffe during an “ARTnews Live,” our ongoing IGTV series featuring interviews with a range of creatives.

Influenced by classic literature and the work of Old Masters like Bruegel, Bosch, and Goya, Banisadr admires their ability “to show humanity from a macro level.” To create his works, he said he “fall[s] down the rabbit hole” while researching the imagery that appears throughout his oeuvre. His maximalist approach to painting starts by sitting with “the infinite possibilities” of a blank canvas until an idea or feeling strikes him. To capture a mood, Banisadr bottles his own color combinations of paint, which has become the basis of his works. The rest, he says, is a “fluid process” … Read the rest