This is exactly what the price of these should be. They are great fun, and decent, but hardly great, quality. For a kid who is graduating from crayons, at this price, I can't think of a better summer option. :-)

ckeilah wrote:This is exactly what the price of these should be. They are great fun, and decent, but hardly great, quality. For a kid who is graduating from crayons, at this price, I can't think of a better summer option. :-)

Very much so. I used to work for an art supply store, and we sold a LOT of these sets the first weeks of summer vacation. Great for bored kids, all the way up to early teens if you're lucky.

Bought an Art101 art set from woot! to give an an X-mas gift. There were no quality issues with the supplies themselves and case was not bad either. The problem was with the plastic inserts in the case that hold the supplies, or rather supposed to hold the supplies. Open the case slowly and don't bang it around when its closed or you will find many pieces falling out. In the end we were best off just throwing all the supplies in the case without the holders.

I buy these for my granddaughters every year to start the summer.
Great gifts for beginning artists or just supplying the children with something to do.
I now have to purchase upscale artist pencils & canvas boards as my Lil one's have outgrown the uses of this set, now! They were very well used & I've a lot of really great drawings & pictures from these sets.
Time really does fly!

Kindergarten teacher and (very) amateur artist here. Amateur in the 'my four-year-olds often draw better pictures than I do' sense. Is this worth it, or am I better off buying something nice for a bit more or something cheap where I can pick and choose what I want?

In other words, are the supplies decent or am I going to be disappointed with usability, color selection or quality, durability, etc? I write and illustrate books for my students and I'd like to dabble in color illustrations next year, so I need something decent, but I don't necessarily need superior supplies to go with my inferior ability.

I'm going to play devils advocate and say that as an artistic kid I got these things -all the time- and I kinda hated them. Granted my sister and I weren't every kid, but we found that generally speaking the pencils didn't color that well, the paints were thin and obnoxious, and the sharpeners were a joke. Maybe things have improved in the last few years but I kinda wince every time I see these on kidswoot, remembering bad-art-sets-past. If you're buying these as a gift and not as a supply set, I'd double check that these are mediums your artistically inclined subject actually enjoys.

Xaotl wrote:I'm going to play devils advocate and say that as an artistic kid I got these things -all the time- and I kinda hated them. Granted my sister and I weren't every kid, but we found that generally speaking the pencils didn't color that well, the paints were thin and obnoxious, and the sharpeners were a joke. Maybe things have improved in the last few years but I kinda wince every time I see these on kidswoot, remembering bad-art-sets-past. If you're buying these as a gift and not as a supply set, I'd double check that these are mediums your artistically inclined subject actually enjoys.

Agreed. I bought this set a few months ago and am disappointed with the quality.

I'm debating this for use in the car on a very long road trip. What do you think woot, how fast can you ship this, or do I need to send it to our destination and pick it up for the return trip?

KtCallista wrote:I'm debating this for use in the car on a very long road trip. What do you think woot, how fast can you ship this, or do I need to send it to our destination and pick it up for the return trip?

You want kids to paint your car's interior? Sounds like a bad time.

weister42 wrote:You want kids to paint your car's interior? Sounds like a bad time.

Are we looking at the same kit? Sure the oil pastels could potentially be messy (but they really are just fancy crayons at this quality level), but rest of the kit is pencils and colored pencils, besides with the exception of the 2 year old, I trust the others to know better. They are 5 and 7 and we have rules and they know them. Destroying property is one of those rules.

the case looks really reaaly nice.