I’ve had trouble through the years finding affordable but quality art supplies, but stores such as Blick have been very helpful to me. Blick is an art supply store that has everything from small crafts for kids to professional portfolios and rows of different types of paint to look through. I usually stop by Blick when they are having sales since it can cut the usual price in half and you’ll get more for your money.

On the other hand, there’s Michael’s, which is normally seen as a craft store chain. However, they not only have more affordable canvas but different canvas framing (such as gallery framing). Michaels also has several small knick knacks, brushes, and overall materials for 3D art from huge foam shapes to little dollhouse accessories. There is also a lot of quality materials for sculpture in, thrift stores, pawn shops, and even the dollar store to find.

However, if you are looking for something more like illustration boards, watercolor pens, and ink, than I’d recommend South City Art Supplies, which is a small corner art supplies store on Cherokee street. They tend to be more personal and usually have a lot of their supplies marked down to a couple of dollars, and since they’re a small store, they have a lot of unique items and advice. In addition, many of the people who work there are artists themselves.

If you’re looking for more sketchbooks or really big drawing pads instead of boards, you could try Art Mart, a small chain art store that carries rows full of different types of sketch pads. I will say that Art Mart is fairly expensive, so I recommend going when there is a sale since most of their sales can end up covering over half of the price.

Another really good small art store to check out is the Krueger Pottery Supply. They have huge stacks of clay, glaze, and a lot more. Krueger Pottery Supply does offer not just one but several different types of quality clay to choose from. However, if you looking for pottery tools I recommend going to Amazon, Michael’s, and Walmart since the quality will be the same as more expensive stores.

I have found all of these stores very helpful, especially because of how essential art supplies are for artists. These cheaper alternatives to normally extremely highly priced art supplies have come in extremely useful.