Our Story

Easel & Ink Studios began with three artists, a shared love of creativity, and one deceptively simple question:

Why does supporting your art have to fit inside somebody else’s box?

We are Christy, Renee, and Tegan — three artists who have spent years creating, learning, experimenting, collecting far too many art supplies, discovering new materials, sharing what we know, and participating in art and watercolor communities of all kinds.

Those communities have given us friendships, inspiration, knowledge, and countless opportunities to discover artists whose work we might never have encountered otherwise. We have watched beginners paint their first hesitant washes and experienced artists share techniques refined over decades. We have discovered handmade paints, beautiful pigments, unusual tools, new books, independent makers, and creative businesses because another artist simply said, “Look what I found.”

But over the years, we also began noticing how difficult it could be for artists to support the very creativity those communities were built around.

There was always another rule.

You may sell finished paintings, but not supplies.

You may sell handmade supplies, but not commercially manufactured ones.

You may share something you love, but not if the link earns you a commission.

You may destash supplies, but only on a particular day.

You may promote your business, but only in one thread.

You may sell watercolor, but perhaps not another medium.

Every community has the right to establish its own boundaries, and many of those rules exist for perfectly understandable reasons. But after years of navigating different groups, different marketplaces, and different sets of restrictions, we started wondering what would happen if someone built something broader.

Not a free-for-all.

Not an endless wall of advertisements.

A creative ecosystem.

A place designed around the reality that artists support their art in many different ways.

Some artists sell paintings.

Some make prints, cards, stickers, or other products featuring their work.

Some carefully mull pigments by hand and create extraordinary watercolor paints one tiny batch at a time.

Some pour and curate palettes from paints they love.

Some create brushes, sketchbooks, ceramic palettes, tools, storage systems, and other beautiful things for fellow artists.

Some have shelves full of perfectly good supplies they no longer use and would rather place into the hands of another artist.

Some review the brushes, books, paints, papers, easels, and supplies they use and help pay for their own materials through affiliate marketing.

And plenty of us do a little bit of everything.

We wanted room for all of it.

That idea became Easel & Ink Studios.

From the beginning, we imagined Easel & Ink as more than a marketplace. The marketplace matters, certainly, but commerce is only one part of an artist’s life.

Before we can sell art, we have to make it.

Before we make it well, we usually make quite a lot of terrible art.

We learn. We experiment. We ask questions. We buy the wrong paper. We fall hopelessly in love with a pigment we absolutely did not need. We discover a brush that suddenly makes something click. We fill sketchbooks. We abandon paintings. We start over. We watch tutorials, read books, compare supplies, swap recommendations, and learn from other artists.

Eventually, we develop our own voices.

That entire journey belongs here.

Easel & Ink Studios is the community side of that vision: a place to create, connect, learn, share discoveries, talk about supplies, celebrate finished work and unfinished experiments, and help other artists grow.

Then there is the marketplace — the bustling little creative market attached to our studio.

Bring your hand-poured paints.

Bring the watercolor pigments you spent hours carefully mulling into precisely the consistency you wanted.

Bring your handmade palettes, brushes, tools, journals, prints, paintings, and creative experiments.

Bring the supplies gathering dust in your studio and give them another opportunity to become someone’s favorite thing.

Bring your affiliate recommendations and tell us why you actually love the thing you’re recommending.

Bring the strange little artistic creation that doesn’t fit neatly into anybody else’s category.

Bring it. We’ll sort it out.

Because the goal isn’t to decide that there is only one correct way to be an artist or one acceptable way to earn enough money to continue making art.

The goal is to help artists find one another.

We want someone searching for a beautiful handmade watercolor to discover the person who mulled it.

We want a beginning painter wondering which paper to buy to find an experienced artist willing to explain the difference.

We want someone cleaning out a studio to connect with someone who would be thrilled to use those forgotten supplies.

We want a tiny independent maker to have a place beside the established brands rather than disappearing beneath them.

We want artists who use affiliate marketing to be able to say, transparently, “I use this. I love it. Here is why.”

And, of course, we want artists to show us their art.

Lots of it.

Easel & Ink isn’t interested in defining who is “artist enough” to belong here. There is room at the table for the professional who has painted for forty years and the person nervously opening their first watercolor set.

There is room for traditional watercolor, gouache, acrylic, ink, illustration, mixed media, sketching, and whatever wonderfully peculiar thing someone invents next.

There is room to learn.

There is room to sell.

There is room to recommend.

There is room to experiment.

Most importantly, there is room to support one another.

Because behind every handmade paint, every original artwork, every affiliate recommendation, every tiny creative business, and every intimidating first attempt is a person trying to make creativity sustainable in their life.

That is what the three of us ultimately wanted to build.

Not simply another art group.

Not simply another marketplace.

A place where creativity can circulate — where artists can teach artists, inspire artists, discover artists, recommend the things that make creating easier, sell the things they make, pass along the things they no longer need, and perhaps earn enough along the way to buy the supplies for whatever they dream of creating next.

We don’t know exactly what Easel & Ink Studios will become.

And we rather like it that way.

Artists have a habit of taking an empty space and turning it into something nobody expected.

So consider this our empty canvas.

Bring your art. Bring your paints. Bring your supplies, discoveries, experiments, recommendations, and ideas.

We’ll make something beautiful together.