The affordable, lightweight and travel-friendly Koi Field Sketch sets are a longtime favorite of watercolor enthusiasts. Each set comes with assorted half pan colors and a refillable water brush so you can start painting right away. The 24 color set features a removable mixing palette and the snap lid doubles as an easel to support a 4x6” paper
Koi Field Sketch sets are perfect for all ages, the paint is specially formulated to blend easily and is 100% non-toxic. Check out our 12, 18 and 24 sets just in time for World Watercolor Month next month!
A cup of water is a staple of watercolor painting from home. But what happens when you want to travel and paint on-the-go? The Koi Water Brush is designed specially for plein-air artists and painting away from home. Unlike most water brushes, the Koi Water Brush includes a water plug that allows the two halves to travel separately — a truly compact design! The fine, flexible tip produces the brushstrokes of a natural hair brush with the durability of nylon material. Beyond water, the easy-to-fill body can hold a wide range of media including ink and high flow acrylic. Koi Water Brushes are available in three round brush sizes — small, medium, large — and two barrel sizes — small (4ml) and large (9ml).
Have you been looking for a sturdy, reliable case for your drawing tools? For a limited time all Global Art Cases and Rolls on are on SALE!
On sale through 06/16/2018
24 Pencil Capacity Zipper Case: On SALE $10.99
36 Pencil Capacity Snap Roll: On SALE $14.99
48 Pencil Capacity Zipper Case: On SALE $14.99
120 Pencil Capacity Zipper Case: On SALE $24.50
Global Art Cases are ideal for taking supplies on-the-go as well as safely storing your tools at home. Each roll/case features strong elastic bands that securely hold down your colored pencils, graphite pencils, technical pens, markers and more. Global Art Rolls stay shut with a sturdy band closure while Global Art Cases feature a solid zipper that buttons to the side of the case. Durable and hand crafted out of heavyweight 16 oz. canvas, these cases and rolls are built to last and will quickly become one of your favorite storage spots.
Buy together, ON SALE for just $29.94
Looking for a gift for Dad or a friend?
Add a set of Tombo Drawing Pencils and create a great new sketching set!
A favorite of artists, atelier workshops and professionals alike, the Tombow Mono pencil is perfect for drawing and drafting. The extra-refined graphite produces smooth, rich value while sketching, writing or working on detailed illustrations. Tombow’s signature fabrication— centering and gluing the lead core throughout the entire wood casing — ensures a break-resistant drawing experience. ARCH is featuring the Tombow Mono Professional Drawing Set, it contains one pencil of grades 6B through 4H, a sharpener and a Tombow white eraser.
A simple, all-purpose and durable sketchbook is often the key to bringing your best ideas forward. If you’re an artist, a writer or just a creative mind, you will find the Pentalic Traveler sketchbook an inspiring book to keep by your side.
Packed with 80 sheets (160 pages) of white, 74lb recycled paper, the Traveler takes pencil, ink, fountain pen and even watercolor washes. We’ve added a new rack of Traveler books that features three different sizes in a variety of bold colors. Each book comes equipped with a ribbon page marker, back pocket, and an elastic closure that makes the Traveler the ideal sketchbook to take everywhere you go.
The Pentalic Aqua Journal features thick sturdy paper that gives confidence that one can deal heavy watercolor washes. The smaller sizes are great for traveling and with the hard cover it will hold up easily to the everyday stress of travel and handling. The binding also allows it to lay flat when working. These are available in four sizes (including a 5x5 square!).
We suggest pairing the Aqua Journal with these great Art Advantage Water Brushes. Makes a great gift for a friend, a father or yourself!
Since 1990, R&F Handmade Paints® has manufactured linseed oil-based
Pigment Sticks®. Distinguished by their lipstick-like soft consistency
and wide range of complex colors, R&F Pigment Sticks® inspire
artists worldwide bringing color, texture, translucency, gesture, depth
and immediacy to their art.
They can be manipulated with a paint knife, a brush or vigorously pushed along your surface until the paint
is a buttery consistency. R&F Pigment Sticks® can be thinned with
mineral spirits or with oil mediums.
Draw with them.
Mix them with tube oils.
Dip
them into stand oil, linseed oil, alkyd mediums, resin gels, or use
colorless R&F Blending Sticks and Medium to increase transparency
and add body.
ARCH is now stocking the full line 38ml sticks along with jars of the R&F Blending Medium.
World famous for quality, lightfast pigments, the opaque, water-soluble colors in CarbOthello pencils blend beautifully and erase easily.
Draw with CarbOthello pencils as you would draw with a pastel stick or use like watercolor pencils – they respond instantly to a wet brush or pre-dampened paper.
CarbOthello’s large-diameter lead can make broad strokes or be sharpened to a fine point for details and lettering. Available in 60 shades, individually and in various ranges as sets.
As we continue to expand our stock we saw an obvious need for larger quantities of Heavy Body Acrylics from Golden Artist Colors.
Tubes so big, hands so tiny ;)
New to stock at ARCH and 40% off list price during our back
to school sale*. We have 60 colors available at this size in addition to
Golden’s full line of heavy body’s in 2oz.
We have also been adding in larger sizes of Golden Acrylic Mediums. Stop in soon to see what else is new at ARCH! *sale ends 02/17/2018, hurry in!
Click the sale flyer to see some of the great deals we have during
back-to-school. Visit our store to see even more. Great deals on
Newsprint, Sketchbooks, Acrylics, Oils, Panels and much, much more!
Looking to fill a stocking? On a budget for your friends and family? Caryn and Kate do a great job every year finding quality items to fit stockings and budgets of all sizes.
Support Your Local Art Supply Store This Holiday Season!
We have put together some great sets for artists of all types. From the beginner, to the professional, you can find what you are looking for at ARCH. In addition we have a number of great gift sets, stocking stuffers, wraps, ribbons and cards.
You can purchase these sets online, but we encourage you to visit our store at 10 Carolina Street in the Potrero Hill neighborhood. We are open late during the week and from 12 to 5pm on Saturdays. We have plenty of off-street parking for our customers.
David's Mix-Media Illustration Kit David's Kit features a variety of tools to facilitate the aspiring illustration or comic artist. ON SALE - $29.00 Buy Now
Mac's Oil Painting Kit Explore the wonders of oil painting with this all-inclusive kit! Great for the beginner to intermediate artist. ON SALE - $69.00 Buy Now
Caryn's Travel Watercolor Kit Everything needed for the nomadic watercolor artist on the go! ON SALE - $45.00 Buy Now
Armando's Watercolor Enthusiast Kit Top of the line supplies for watercolor enthusiasts. Features a handmade swatch card from Armando himself! ON SALE - $79.00 Buy Now
Do you have gently used art supplies you’d like to donate to fire victims in the North Bay?
Knowing that the tragic firestorm that engulfed Sonoma and Napa Counties must have taken a huge toll on artists and art students of that area, we reached out to some of our connections in the Fine Arts Department at Santa Rosa Junior College to find out how we might be of assistance. We heard stories ranging from students who lost their homes and supplies, to others about those whose places of work were destroyed or who ran through their savings while caring for friends and families who had to evacuate.
When asked if there was a need for donated art supplies to help those affected by the fires, the answer was a resounding: YES!
Additionally, we want to open this up to you. If you have gently used materials that you are no longer using, we would gladly include them in the boxes of materials we’re compiling.
What is most needed:
Un-drawn on paper (full or partial pads okay)
Willow Charcoal
Unused Paper Palette Pads (full or partial pads okay)
Graphite or Color Pencils
Used or New Watercolor tubes or Palettes
Used or New Acrylic tubes
Used or New cans of Krylon or Blair Fixative
What is not needed:
Turpentine
Varnishes and/or solvents
Used Canvas
You can drop off your donation of gently used art materials at ARCH through the end of Saturday, November 4th.
Finally, if you are traveling through the Santa Rosa area, we encourage you to visit stores such as Village Art Supply and Riley Street Art Supply. Natural disasters like this have a deep impact on nearby small businesses. These locally owned shops play an important roll in the community and need your support. Retail can be a tough business. Ask any of us the reason we do this work and we’ll all say it’s because of the people and the community which surround us.
Artist Jake Parker created the Inktober drawing challenge back in 2009. Began as way to encourage the practice of his inking and drawing skills, the annual event now draws thousands of submissions each year on Instagram by artists of all ages and skill levels.
How do you participate in Inktober?
1) Make a drawing in ink.
2) Post it online
3) Hashtag it with #inktober and #inktober2017
4) Repeat
We love this drawing challenge and many of us on staff will be participating. If you’re planning to take part in Inktober you have the chance to win a $50 ARCH gift card! As you post your Inktober art on Instagram, tag @archsupplies and make sure to use the official Inktober hashtags. We’ll announce the prize winner after October 31.
Want to check out some of our favorite pen and ink supplies? We have put
together a curated kit with some of our top recommended tools at a
sweet deal to help get you going!
We have been looking to add options in our oil colors category. Recently, we brought in M. Graham Watercolors and Gouache and in reviewing and receiving feedback we are please to announce we have added M. Graham Oil paints to our stock.
M. Graham Oils offer great value with high quality. Using walnut oil as it's binder, in lieu of linseed oil, M. Graham Oils are created in a tradition that dates back to old masters from the Renaissance. The paints have an incredibly high pigment load, offer vibrant colors and a super smooth consistency.
Lets talk more about the binder they use; Walnut oil does not have the same strong odor that comes with most other linseed oil based paints. You can also clean your brushes with walnut oil. It provides a peace of mind to painting in tight studio spaces, as many of us do in the Bay Area.
New to Stock: New Wave Posh Palettes
A nice addition to any oil painters studio is a glass palette.
New Wave Posh palettes are made in the USA with 1/8" tempered glass. These are strong enough to mull paints on and are available with a gray, white or clear background. One of the more ingenious elements to the design is they are sized perfectly to fit into Masterson palette boxes. This allows you to seal your paints overnight and still get the ease of clean up a glass palette provides.
We are currently stocking these in 9x12 and 12x16 and we also have the matching Masterson boxes for purchase.
We are excited to announce that we are now stocking select colors of the De Atramentis Document Inks from Germany. We handed a few off to illustrator, artist and ARCHie, David Tenorio to play with and review. He came away impressed. Check out his review and a short video he made working with these inks:
After hearing many requests from our customers, we’re really happy to bring in a new fountain pen ink: De Atramentis Document Ink. This hand-made ink is created from historical recipes using high quality European dyes. Coming all the way from Germany, De Atramentis Ink comes highly recommended from a number of urban sketchers and calligraphers.
I was immediately impressed with the rich quality of color as well as the amount of shading this ink produces. Across all brands, I have noticed only a select number of inks have a "shading" quality in which the ink color varies in mark depending on how much is deposited. The De Atramentis lays down nicely and produces a variety of values.
With a brush, the ink has a very rich hue when washed out. I think this ink would be amazing just to paint with in addition to how great it's been in fountain pen and loaded on a dip pen.
One of the best features of this ink is that it is completely waterproof! Many inks claim to be waterproof only to smudge or run a bit. The De Atramentis has been successfully tested with watercolor and Copic marker and has had zero smearing. This makes De Atramentis a perfect ink for urban sketching and illustration.
If you're at all interested in calligraphy or working with ink in your art, I HIGHLY recommend adding De Atramentis to your collection. At ARCH we are currently stocking 37ml bottles in Black, Grey, Red and Brown, stop by and we’ll be happy to show you swatches of this exceptional ink.
Now at ARCH you can find staple needs for your fashion studio.
By popular demand we have sourced an unbleached, medium weight muslin, 48" length and sold by the yard. Featuring a "plain weave" crisscross pattern, this durable and affordable fabric is perfect for test fitting.
We are now stocking Pattern Paper, aka Oak Tag in 48" length and sold by the yard. Pattern Papers allow for easy cutting. It lays flat, has
durable yet smooth edges, cut and folds perfectly, and are able to be written on
with ease.
And check it out: Rolls of Pro Guide Marking Paper 48"x10yd. Pro Guide marking papers are used in cutting and design
rooms throughout the world. This sturdy 35lb marking papers allow for multiple
uses. Some of the features:
Medium thickness with matte finish
Ideal for Blueline Marker copying
Alpha-Numeric design with + marks every two inches
1/4 yard edge marks
In addition, we carry pins, needles, cutters, Copic Sketch markers and much much more for fashion students and professionals.
