Blick Art Materials

The store is very clean and the staff were very friendly for the most part. Katie was the most helpful and she showed me everything that I needed. Also, the materials are very reasonably priced and there is a HUGE selection for a small store. The drawing/​how-​to books could be a little more diverse and I wish that they had some that catered to beginners in drawing. However, I had a great experience there.

Blick is generally well supplied and the staff is very friendly, helpful, and fairly knowledgeable. The prices are competitive, however If you intend to do any amount of shopping here it is well worth getting the Blick’s reward card. They have almost any paper or marker you might want. They carry a full range of oils, acrylics, and brushes. They have a decent selection of stretched canvas and rolled canvas both primed and unprimed. They are a little light on linen canvas, though I find the house brand Blick Premier Heavy Weight cotton primed is really about as good as it gets for cotton. Blick also has a very good selection of stretcher bars in both light and heavy-​duty. If you need a brick and mortar art store then Blick will most probably serve your needs.

Super expensive but great quality. You’ll find everything your heart could ever wish for! :)

Incredibly large selection and helpful staff — I was working on a project and looking for something specific so I called ahead to confirm they had it. When I got there, an employee (Dug) had already set it by the register for me! He also helped me find a number of items throughout the store. Incredibly helpful and friendly staff!

Clean and organized store with the best customer service I’ve received in a long time. Every staff member was attentive and super helpful — they know so much about all different kinds of art! I wanted to get into oil painting but didn’t know exactly what materials to get. Eric knows all about oil painting, so he provided candid advice on what to get and directed me to everything I needed to get started. On top of the preferred customer card and the 10% student discount, I saved a significant amount today on my beginning oil painting materials. I’ll definitely come back for my future art supply needs or even to talk art with the staff.

I needed a black Pebeo Porcelaine 150 marker for testing before I brought a 9 pack from Amazon and they had it! Score!
This is one of the only places that carries this brand in the area.
The service was super friendly and I was asked by a few different sales associates if I needed any assistance.
The only other Blick I’ve been to is one in San Francisco-​Market Street location and they weren’t nearly as friendly as they are here! Loves it.
Other notes:
Street parking.
Blick card offered for savings.
Next to Walgreens and Starbucks.
In the heart of Central Square.

I found everything I needed easily and the employees were really friendly. They practicly forced me to accept the discount card that gives you 10% discount for free! Although it wasn’t the most complete store, it wasn’t a lot of brands to choose from in oil painting and the ink part was pretty much inexistent. I would totally recomend it if you’re not looking for ink supplies!

One of the best places to get your supplies for arts and crafts. This place is conveniently located right next to Central T station which is a huge plus!
Lately I’ve been coming here to get supplies for my Clay class and I was very happy with the staff that have helped me so far. They are pretty knowledgeable and can answer any questions you have if you are new to art. (I had a person help me in another store that was not Blick and I felt they did not know anything so thank god for Blick).
Blicks has a rewards card that is only for students I believe? They asked me for my student ID when signing up. The person that helped me open one did not explain much of the benefits but that I will sometimes get coupons through email. Better than nothing if anybody wants some extra discounts next time.
I’m not familar with art supplies but I was pretty surprised at how expensive some of the products can get. There are some cheaper alternatives in the store but just seeing how expensive it can get scared my wallet a bit.
Overall, if you ever need art supplies come here it’s a great place to go to. If you’re driving it may be difficult to find parking considering the multiple snow storms over the winter. If you can, take public transportation, it may take you a bit longer but it’s definitely less stressful than driving in all the recent traffic.

Top notch art supply store, comparable to Pearl and Utrecht. Has everything one could need for sketching, advanced illustration, commercial art, painting, cartooning, comics, and animation. They also have some very useful small plastic cylindrical containers and glass jars. If you get on their mailing list, be sure to time your shopping days to coincide with the higher discount coupons you receive in the mail or find in flyers.
You can get here via the MBTA Red Line Central Square subway station or park in the parking lot next to H Mart. (The parking lot is not easily visible from Massachusetts Avenue.) Make sure you check out Artist & Craftsman Supply across the street (a little further south toward Boston) FIRST before you shop here.

If you get the rewards card /​are a student, you get 10% off of everything. They occasionally have weekend sales that make it cheaper than A&C across the street! Especially when the canvases are on sale — that (in my experience) has been a better deal than at A&C.
Good selection of paints, pencils, canvases, and the staff is very helpful.
I brought in a couple of pieces to get custom matted and choose frames, and the guy was very friendly. Even so, it ended up costing around $ 30 per piece for the matting and the cheapest frames. They (supposedly) left one message when it was done, but I didn’t get it and they never followed up until I called 3 weeks later asking what happened to my work! One piece came back with a few tiny scratches, and then when I was putting them in the frames (which the guy doing the framing and I discussed at length), I realized that the nicer frame he upsold me on (something to prevent the work from yellowing from the sun… not really necessary for my high school artwork) was actually much thinner than the other frames — so thin that the matting is actually too thick! So now I either have to go back and ask him to shave it down or I have to shave it down myself. Meh. For now I’ve hung the other two and will decide what to do with the last one later.

Big selection, friendly staff, nice sales, clean.
Come for paints of all types, canvases, pencils… all the standard art supplies in a large store.
Quirky and cute cards and other gifts in the front of the store.
I was asked if I needed help by two people each time I went in. I guess maybe I look lost?
Overall, it’s a standard chain art store packed with a big selection and decently prices stuff.

I like this store. They have everything an artist needs… or someone who would wanna be an artist like me! ;-)
Staff is very nice and helpful. Not a cheap store, but great place to find the supplies for your next masterpiece!

I’ve been to this location twice. I’d give the Boston location 5 stars, and knock a star off of this one just because the selection is not as vast. The customer service has been fine, I went there today and got fine service. I would say it’s just because I’m a hot guy, but I also saw one of the girls go out of her way to help a weird middle-​aged guy figure out a way to glue two pieces of velcro together permanently. I notice a lot of the negative reviews are a year or two old, maybe they have gotten it together since then. This is a good store, and the prices are great. Best around, and better than Amazon. The prices on their website are a little better than the store, but the shipping charges are a little silly. I think it’s better off to shop in the stores. There aren’t as many art supply stores around as there used to be, but this is a good one.

Unlike the blick in Fenway, you can wander here for days without being helped. When I was in there, and asking for help, I really felt like I was pestering people with my non-​artist requests. I was working on putting together a mask, and I would rather frequent an art supply store than a cheap costume store… but I left pretty disheartened. Fortunately, I ended up by fenway, where they set me straight and got me exactly what I wanted… the Cambridge store could really take a page from their fenway sibling.

Fantastic store! Every art/​creative project product you could imagine. The prices are good, location is great, and staff are nice. I’ll be a repeat customer for a long time!

Came here for a large number of custom framing jobs. Very expensive, but the frame selection is excellent and the customer service, especially Hillary, was great.
The resulting work — a mix of both photographs, memorabilia, and prints — came out very well. Hillary has a good artistic eye.

Customer service is horrible. I don’t wanna name the guy but he does not know how many feet there are in a yard and he was there to help me with cutting the canvas role. He also wanted to let the canvas drag on the floor was FOLDING it as he measured it for me (once he finally figured out the measurement when I helped him).
So at the end when I refused to take a folded up canvas that was blistered with dirt from the floor, that’s when his teenage angst came out (oh my god teenagers.)
He didn’t ask but TOLD me to hold the canvas while he cut it and accused me of not being clear on how much I wanted. If I say I need two sheets of 2 yard canvas each. What does that mean? It does NOT mean a sheet of 3 yards and another of 1 yard.
When I was finally at the cashier, they didn’t want to make efforts to help me wrap up a FIVE feet tall canvas. It is NOT easy to carry. «Do you want me to tape the edges or what?» he said. I at least want you to PRETEND like you wanna help.
It’s an ART STORE!!! OF COURSE people are going to buy oddly sized and shaped canvases and other stuff!!! Why you help the customer???
Dear manager, please check out this situation I reported.
GOSH. I left regretting not going to Utrecht instead.
Ugh. What a bad experience.

The issue here is that Blick happens to be on the side of the street of Central where you know it’s going to fail one day, because that’s what happens to everything on the north side of Mass Ave… really. BUT because you can view its innards (consisting of rows and rows of canvas, paint, sketch supplies, and more) from the street and apparently lots of people need Art in Central Square, it will be well received for the time.
I entered Blick to share my local purchasing love and had already spent a whole bunches across the street. My goal was to find a cute diary of sorts for my niece. I had just returned to my home hood from a day long of shopping, which meant I was loaded with approx 50 lbs of gifts on my back, in tow, hanging out the side… like a female Asian claus of sorts. Unfortunately, the aisles in the store were sooo tightly squeezed, I could barely settle myself without causing an aisle queue or knocking over a wall loaded with paint tubes. Plus, I was in pain…
Without feeling successful and with sweat rolling down my cheeks, I stood in a long line to pay for a ring-​bound sketch book with a black cover, cursing … er… promising myself I would take it up a notch by gluing the heck out of the cover in pink shreds of old magazine pages (thank you, Absolut cosmo ad). I just needed to get my xmas shopping bedoozled.

The other one star review for this store has a point– the customer service is severely lacking. I don’t know if they’re understaffed or just lazy, but nobody helps you unless you go up to the counter and ask for it, which is kind of annoying in relatively large store.
I will say that based on the strength of their selection (and reasonable prices) that I’m giving them four stars. I came in looking for some unique coloring supplies for an ad-​hoc project and was not disappointed. Left with some metallic coloring pencils and a pad of black paper that the girl at the counter recommended.

Blick is clean. Unbearably so. Don’t the good folks here know creation is messy, spattered, chunked and torn?
Art is disorganized; Blick is not. Pristine rows of immaculately arranged supplies, pointing even the most novice of budding artistes to what they need, and priced so even the starving can create.
Yeah, it’s a chain and the looming ghost of Pearl will score nary a notice under the fluorescent lights and retail uniformity. But, for ease of navigation and a well-​stocked selection, Blick does the trick.