Editorial policy
The rules we hold ourselves to, published so you can hold us to them too. Last updated March 2026.
A trusted buyer's guide
Bob's Art Supplies exists to help artists buy less and buy better. We are a content-driven resource: our primary product is trustworthy information, and our primary audience is people learning art — not just shopping for it. Every page on bobsartsupplies.com is written to be useful even if you never click a single product link.
We organize the site as a silo of interconnected resources: category guides cover a whole medium in depth, and supporting articles answer specific questions, linking back to their category and to each other. The structure mirrors how artists actually learn.
How we choose what to recommend
Recommendations come from hands-on testing by our editorial team, following the protocols in our review methodology. A product is recommended only when our team would hand it to a friend at that price. We do not accept sponsored placements, and brands cannot pay to appear in — or to be removed from — any guide.
When we recommend at two tiers (beginner and professional), the beginner pick is always a product we would genuinely start with, not a cheap placeholder, and the professional pick is one we use ourselves.
How we make money
Bob's Art Supplies is reader-supported through affiliate links. When you buy through a product link on this site, we may earn a commission from Amazon (as an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases) at no additional cost to you. Every product link carries our tracking ID and is marked as sponsored in the link itself.
Affiliate revenue funds testing, writing, and hosting. It never influences rankings: our verdicts are written before links are added, and the same products would appear if the affiliate program did not exist. Products are only listed when we can stand behind them — we do not populate product feeds or list items we cannot verify.
Corrections and updates
Art supplies change: formulas are reformulated, prices move, products are discontinued. Every guide carries an "updated" date, and we re-review cornerstone content on a rolling basis. When we get something wrong, we fix the page and note the change rather than quietly editing history.
Spot an error, a discontinued product, or a better alternative we should test? Write to the editorial team — every reader email reaches a human editor, and reader corrections have improved several of our guides.
Independence and conflicts
No member of the editorial team holds equity in, or accepts fees from, any art-materials manufacturer. Review samples are purchased at retail whenever possible; when a manufacturer provides a sample, it is disclosed on the page and the product must still pass the same protocol.
Our full testing process — wash studies, durability tests, and scoring criteria — is documented on the review methodology page.
Questions about this policy? See how we test.