Expand Your Creative Arsenal with a Monthly Subscription of New Art Supplies

Launched last month by EatSleepDraw, a lively online art gallery of user-submitted content, ArtSnacks is a new subscription delivery service of five curated art products for artists to sample each month, delivered in a special, hand-wrapped package that’s sure to inspire bursts of creativity.

Accompanied by a short guide on why each product was put on the month’s “menu,” the project, available at $20 per month, is a promising and fun artist-oriented take on monthly sample boxes like Birchbox, a subscription service for personal grooming items, For the Makers, which sends out DIY jewelry-making tools, and Quarterly, a service that features culture figures curating curious collections of objects.

I unboxed the March shipment of ArtSnacks to discover the delectable art materials within, and found a compelling selection of art-making tools, suitable for amateurs and professionals alike.

The “snacks” were mostly drawing-oriented (much like EatSleepDraw itself), although there were some painting materials in the mix as well. This month’s kit included the Brush Tip Sharpie (perhaps something of a standard choice), which ArtSnacks promised would “be your new favorite Sharpie,” the hefty triangular-shaped Spangle Mini Jumbo Size Learning Pencil “for those of you who tend to lose things,” a tube of Reeves Gouache Artist Paint which they say is “great for bringing ink illustrations to life” (I didn’t try out the taste of this particular art snack paint, but it looked quite rich), a Palomino Blackwing pencil (“great for sketching”), and the Solo Horton 2108 Professional Quality Watercolor Brush to go with the gouache, which is “ideal for a watercolor artist to master the challenge of staining and layering the paint.”

I liked that the menu had straight-forward tips on using the materials, like trying different pressures in drawing with the Sharpie. The sampler gives artists a chance to dabble in a bunch of different materials to see which ones they like, and if you’re keen on any of them in particular, you’re able to order more through the ArtSnacks website.

Being a creator of the scribbling kind, I most enjoyed discovering the Palomino Blackwing pencil, which ArtSnacks states was deemed “the best pencil ever” and was used by animation director Chuck Jones for shows like Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry. While I’m definitely not in the league of such extraordinary animators, it was fun to write with the pencil’s surprisingly dark graphite and broad eraser. The pencil was something I probably wouldn’t have sought out on my own.

That sense of surprise seems to be what ArtSnacks is all about: bringing inspirational new materials right to your doorstep to mix in with your art experimenting.

ArtSnacks is available for $20 per month through their website.