Celebrity Art Supplies Tested: Four Sets Worth a Second Look

Introduction

Plenty of celebrity art rooms get photographed, and if you look closely at the backgrounds, some genuinely interesting art supplies show up. We tracked down four of them: a budget acrylic set spotted in a pop star’s studio, a thick-body acrylic used as the comparison, a compact watercolor set seen in a singer’s posted artwork, and a German colored pencil line found in a very beige celebrity playroom. The surprise is how the price tags and the quality line up, and which of these actually make sense for everyday artists.

What We Evaluated

Each supply was tested the same way: pigment strength, coverage, blending behavior, included accessories, and whether the price matches the performance. The acrylics were swatched over a black line to check transparency, the watercolor was tested for vibrancy and melt-down speed, and the pencils were compared against premium competitors like Caran d’Ache and Prismacolor for layering and blending.

The goal was simple: find out which celebrity-endorsed-by-accident supplies are worth buying when you are not famous and not selling paintings for five figures.

Best Budget Acrylic: Artist’s Loft Academic Level 1 Acrylic Paint and Medium Set

This set comes from Michaels’ house brand, Artist’s Loft, and it is essentially the store’s generic alternative to name-brand paints. The “Academic Level 1” label means it sits at the lowest tier of paint grading: less pigment, lower-quality pigment, and more transparency than student or artist grades.

In testing, that showed. Strokes were somewhat transparent, with a black test line faintly visible under the yellow. It is not a bad look, though. Coverage lands roughly in the middle, and the paint behaves well enough for casual painting, hobby projects, and experimenting without worrying about wasting expensive tubes. Compared directly against a thick-body artist acrylic, the difference in smoothness and opacity is obvious, but so is the difference in price.

This is the paint to grab if you want something fun and forgiving to paint with on a weekend, not if you are building a serious studio practice.

Best Artist-Grade Acrylic: Masters Touch Thick Body Acrylic Paint

Used as the head-to-head comparison against the budget set, Masters Touch Thick Body Acrylic is noticeably smoother, more opaque, and richer. Where the budget paint lets the paper show through a streak, this one lays down a dense, even film.

Right off the brush you can tell there is a difference. The thick body consistency holds stroke texture well, covers a black test line cleanly, and generally behaves the way you would expect from a step up in grade. If you are deciding between the two, the honest summary is that the cheaper paint did exactly what casual painting demands, while this one rewards you with better pigment and smoother handling on every stroke.

Choose this if you paint regularly and want your materials to stop holding you back. Keep the budget set for sketchbook work and experiments.

Best Value Watercolor: Dyvicl 42 Count Color Set

This compact folding pan set was spotted in artwork posted by the singer Halsey, and it turns out to be one of the best value picks in this whole lineup, listing for around 15 dollars on Amazon. The first impression is the sheer number of colors packed into one small package: 42 pans, plus a built-in sponge for wiping excess water, a placeholder for brushes, and a mixing palette built right into the lid.

It genuinely feels like the swiss army knife of watercolor sets. Everything you need to start painting is in one folding unit, which makes it ideal for travel, sketching outdoors, or just keeping a full palette on a small desk.

Performance holds up too. The colors are vibrant, the pans melt down almost instantly with a wet brush, and the range of hues means you rarely need to mix just to find something usable. Tested cold, after a long break from watercolor, it made the medium feel inviting again. This is the easiest recommendation of the four.

Best Premium Pencil: Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor

The most unexpected find: plain wooden colored pencils with a tiny color-dipped tip were spotted in the homework area of Kim Kardashian’s playroom tour. The distinct bare-wood design and color-cap tip point to Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor pencils from Germany.

Out of the box they feel fancy, and for good reason. They are made from pure wood rather than compressed wood shavings, and the color names reference the actual pigments inside. This one is not just “blue,” it is Prussian blue. That kind of naming convention is usually reserved for artist-grade lines.

Performance is more mixed. In side-by-side swatches against Caran d’Ache and Prismacolor pencils, the Lyra cores have nice pigment but are a little harder to blend, noticeably streakier, and harder to layer on top of each other, with top colors mixing into the layers beneath more than you would want. That streakiness suggests more filler in the core. They are still good pencils worth recommending to many people, but as an artist’s workhorse they land around a 7 out of 10, and buying them purely so kids can do homework is, frankly, very extra.

Overall Buying Advice

Ranking the four by practical value: the Dyvicl watercolor set is the clear winner, offering vibrant color, instant melt-down, and a complete travel kit for around 15 dollars. The Masters Touch thick body acrylic is the right pick if you want artist-grade coverage and smoothness. The Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor pencils are charming and pigmented but blend and layer like a mid-tier pencil, so buy them for the pigment names and wooden build only if that matters to you. The Artist’s Loft Academic Level 1 set is perfectly serviceable for casual, low-stakes painting, and its low price is exactly the point.

Conclusion

Not every supply that ends up in a celebrity’s home is a premium product, and not every budget product is a compromise. A 15-dollar watercolor set outperformed expectations, a house-brand acrylic proved fine for fun, and a beautiful German pencil line showed that looks and blending performance are not the same thing. Match the tool to what you actually paint, and the price tag matters far less than the result on the paper.