Artists always want muses without realizing that they’re a big responsibility—they demand regular walks, a ticket to every sunset, and smoothies made of old pastels and Greek yogurt. Cultivate your creativity an easier way with today's Groupon: for $20, you get $40 worth of art supplies at FLAX art & design on Market Street.

Backed by more than seven decades of dedicated services, FLAX supports the local art community. The store boasts a massive, expansive interior stocked with a pupil-widening 40,000+ items—including paints, brushes, canvasses, calendars, blank bound books, age-appropriate art kits, and practically anything related to stroking, sketching, molding, framing, journaling, revolutionizing, and mind-caressing. Students and pros alike can open up the art box and toss in a few glossy Montana paint tubes ($6.75 each), industry-standard Copic Sketch Markers ($5.89 each), and oil-based DecoColor Paint Markers ($2.79–$2.99), while fashionista artisans remix essentials with inspired Cavallini 2011 planners ($13.95) and cute, inedible yet enviable KOKO 2010 lunch bags ($24–$29.50).

Beyond providing a selection deeper than most oceanic metaphors for the human condition, FLAX delivers on the customer-service end, staffing a departmental design team of well-learned creatives. Whether they're finding the ideal brush size, the principally logical color complement, or the trustiest tools for ship-in-a-bottle smashing, the enthusiastic staffers move fast, explain simply, and smile radiantly.

In-store purchases only.

Reviews

San Francisco CityVoters rate FLAX art & design one of the Top Five Arts and Crafts shops in the city. The New York Times raves about FLAX art & design, and Frommer's recommends it too. More than 200 Yelpers give it an average of four stars, while Citysearchers give it five:

• You’ll find Flax under “Art Materials and Supplies” in the San Francisco phone book, which is like defining the Grand Canyon as a riverbed: it may be technically true, but it grossly understates the depth, breadth and wonder of the place. – David G. Allan, New York Times
• If you go into an art store for a special pencil and come out $300 later, don't go near this shop. Flax has everything you can think of in art and design supplies, an amazing collection of blank bound books, children's art supplies, frames, calendars -- you name it. There's a gift for every type of person here, especially you. – Frommer's