Arteza: Premium Art Supplies at Accessible Prices

Arteza has emerged as one of the most disruptive forces in the art supply market since its founding in 2015. Built on a direct-to-consumer model that eliminates traditional retail markups, Arteza delivers professional-quality materials at price points that make them accessible to students, hobbyists, and working artists who refuse to compromise on quality but need to be mindful of their budgets.

In March 2025, Plaid Enterprises—the company behind the iconic Mod Podge brand—acquired Arteza to expand into the fine art market. The dedicated Arteza website has ceased operations, with all traffic redirecting to Plaid Crafts' website, where Arteza's complete product line continues to be sold. This acquisition ensures the continuation and expansion of Arteza's product offerings while integrating them into Plaid's broader craft and art supply ecosystem.

The company has built its reputation on a specific promise: professional-grade pigments, materials, and construction at prices significantly below established premium brands. Their acrylic paint sets, real brush pens, colored pencil collections, and marker systems have earned loyal followings among artists who discovered that Arteza's products perform at levels far above what their price tags suggest.

Distribution and Availability

Following the Plaid Enterprises acquisition, Arteza products are now available through Plaid Crafts' website and retail channels, expanding accessibility beyond the direct-to-consumer model that originally defined the brand. While the dedicated Arteza website no longer exists, the full product line remains available through Plaid Crafts, ensuring that artists can continue to access the same professional-quality materials that built Arteza's reputation.

Arteza's original business model bypassed the traditional art supply distribution chain by selling primarily through their own website and select online marketplaces, eliminating the wholesale and retail margins that add 40-60% to the price of traditional art supplies. This structural cost advantage allowed them to use higher-quality pigments, better brush construction, and more durable materials than competing products at similar price points. Under Plaid's ownership, this commitment to quality and value continues.

The result is a catalog where a 60-color acrylic paint set costs what many competitors charge for a 12-color professional set—without the quality sacrifice that typically accompanies low prices. Independent artist reviews and pigment tests consistently confirm that Arteza's formulations deliver genuine vibrancy, opacity, and lightfastness that justify the "professional" designation on their packaging.

Product Highlights

Acrylic Paints

Arteza's acrylic line includes both student-grade and professional-grade formulations in sets ranging from basic primary colors to comprehensive 60+ color collections. The professional acrylics feature high pigment loads, smooth consistency, and excellent coverage. Their gouache and watercolor lines have expanded rapidly, with each release reflecting refinements based on extensive artist feedback.

Real Brush Pens

The Arteza Real Brush Pens are among the company's most celebrated products. Each pen contains a flexible nylon brush tip that mimics the behavior of a traditional watercolor brush, allowing for variable line width, blending, and watercolor-like washes. The 96-color set provides a comprehensive palette for illustration, hand lettering, journaling, and mixed-media work.

Drawing Materials

Colored pencil sets feature wax-based and oil-based options with rich pigmentation and smooth laydown. Professional graphite pencils, charcoal sets, and sketching kits round out the drawing category. Arteza's sketchbooks—available in multiple sizes, paper weights, and binding styles—have earned particular praise for their paper quality at the price point.

Who Is Arteza For?

Students benefit most directly from Arteza's value proposition. The ability to purchase comprehensive, high-quality supply sets without exhausting a limited budget means students can experiment with more media, use supplies more freely, and develop their skills without the anxiety of wasting expensive materials.

Hobbyists and enthusiasts who paint, draw, or craft regularly find Arteza's pricing allows them to maintain well-stocked studios without the financial commitment that premium brands require.

Professional artists increasingly use Arteza products for specific applications—studio work, underpainting, large-scale projects, and teaching—where the cost savings are significant and the quality meets their standards.

Watercolor and Gouache Expansion

Arteza has significantly expanded its watercolor and gouache offerings in recent years, responding to the growing popularity of these media among both traditional painters and urban sketchers. The watercolor line includes tube sets and pan sets in a range of sizes, with pigments selected for vibrancy, transparency, and rewetting capability. Independent artist reviews have noted that Arteza's watercolors perform well above their price point, with genuine transparency and clean mixing behavior that rivals mid-range established brands.

The gouache range provides opaque watercolor options that have proven popular with illustrators, designers, and mixed-media artists. The formulations offer smooth, matte coverage with excellent reworkability—the ability to rewet and adjust dried gouache that is essential for the medium's characteristic flat, graphic quality. For artists exploring gouache for the first time, Arteza's accessible pricing removes the financial risk of experimenting with a new medium.

Canvas and Surface Products

Arteza's canvas range includes pre-stretched canvases in standard sizes, canvas panels, and canvas rolls—all manufactured with quality cotton duck on properly assembled stretcher bars. The pre-stretched options are particularly popular for their combination of acceptable quality and aggressive pricing, allowing painters to use real canvas for practice and experimentation rather than settling for cheaper alternatives that compromise the painting experience.

Canvas panels provide rigid, portable painting surfaces that are ideal for plein air painting, classroom use, and small-format work. Arteza's panels use quality canvas bonded to rigid board, providing a professional painting surface at prices that make them disposable for practice sessions—an important consideration for developing painters who need to produce volume without worrying about the cost of each surface.

Shopping for Arteza Products

Arteza products are now available through Plaid Crafts' website (plaidcrafts.com), which provides a streamlined purchasing experience with detailed product descriptions, customer reviews, and frequently updated product photography that accurately represents colors and materials. The platform offers free shipping on orders over a modest threshold, with reliable delivery times across the United States and international markets.

Arteza maintains an active social media presence that features customer artwork, technique demonstrations, and product announcements. This community engagement serves both marketing and educational purposes—showcasing what artists achieve with Arteza products while providing inspiration and technique ideas that encourage creative experimentation. The brand's commitment to artist feedback and community building continues under Plaid's stewardship.

Quality Control and Continuous Improvement

Arteza has demonstrated a commitment to continuous product improvement based on artist feedback. The company actively solicits reviews, monitors social media discussions about product performance, and iterates on formulations and designs based on real-world user experience. This feedback loop has produced measurable improvements across product lines—paints with better pigment loads, brushes with improved ferrule construction, and sketchbooks with heavier paper that handles wet media more effectively.

This responsiveness to customer feedback distinguishes Arteza from larger manufacturers whose product development cycles are slower and less directly influenced by end-user experience. For artists who provide detailed feedback, there is genuine satisfaction in seeing subsequent product releases incorporate the improvements they suggested.

The Bottom Line

Arteza has proven that the art supply market was ripe for disruption. By combining direct-to-consumer economics with genuine attention to product quality and a responsiveness to artist feedback that larger brands struggle to match, the company has created a brand that delivers remarkable value across every major art medium. For students building their first serious supply collections, hobbyists maintaining well-stocked creative spaces, and professionals seeking cost-effective options for high-volume applications, Arteza is a compelling and increasingly essential choice.