Art Toolkit

Sketch anywhere, anytime! Compact tools for sketching: the Art Toolkit, Pocket Palette, and field-tested accessories. Created by .

Located in Port Townsend, Washington.

01/01/2026

We’re thrilled to have a new warehouse space for our operations!

Our new warehouse space gives us breathing room with more areas for inventory, production, and office team work stations (everyone has a desk!). We love having good neighbors, too, from the Aurora Loop Gallery across the street, to nearby Social Fabric Brewing, Lila’s Kitchen, and our favorite, Raney Day Coffee Truck. We also have a lovely nearby duck pond with lots of wild blackberries to pick in late summer.

Warehouse highlights:

- Getting to open the big bay doors on sunny days
- The smooth floor which the Logistics Team loves (they have been outfitting office chairs with rollerblade wheels for extra smooth gliding)
- Plants that make the space more friendly and beautiful

Check out our blog post for the full update and see more photos of our new space! https://arttoolkit.com/blog/2025/12/room-to-grow-expanding-our-workspace

12/19/2025

Looking for a way to spice up your art practice, refine techniques, and engage in community in the new year? Look no further: our Winter Workshop Series is now open for registration!⁠

Choose between Live or Recorded Access and learn from instructors Paul Wang, Barbara Luel, and Maria Coryell-Martin⁠⁠.

Live Access has limited spots and comes with a Q&A session with the artist and a chance to share your work during the workshop! Both Live and Recorded Access come with a recording of the online workshop for a whole year to work on and refer back to at your own pace.

• Nature’s Textures: Explore Density and Direction in Watercolor with Paul Wang
• Teacup du Jour: Practice Simple Subjects in Mixed Media with Barbara Luel
• Palette of Place: Discover Colors Around You with Maria Coryell-Martin

Each workshop is led by an expert artist and teacher who has their own tips and tricks of the trade to share. What better way to step into a new year of art-making than with these three as your guides? Register at https://arttoolkit.com/workshops/.

12/18/2025

Art Toolkit Ambassador Lisa Spangler used to have a hard time painting conifers. But now she’s finally figured them out, and she’s ready to share her tips and tricks with you!⁠
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Here's an excerpt from Lisa:⁠
“I like to start by figuring out which greens I’m going to use. I love using Perylene Green mixed with Cerulean Blue Hue for spruce trees, and Sap Green mixed with Yellow Ochre for pines.⁠
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This time of year calls for a little festive sparkle, so I like to add Daniel Smith Iridescent Gold to my paintings.”⁠
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My tree game completely changed after I started using a dagger brush—it makes it super easy, and super fun, to paint a conifer! I start by using the tip of the dagger brush straight on, to “stamp” the trunk with a light, juicy green, making sure to leave some gaps for center-facing branches. I’ve found that stamping the brush using the dagger really helps me get an even trunk that’s not too big on either end.”⁠
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Check out the full blog post with pictures of all of Lisa's beautiful holiday tags here: https://arttoolkit.com/blog/2025/12/evergreens-and-holiday-gift-tags/

12/11/2025

Art Toolkit Founder Maria Coryell-Martin is hosting a month of nature journaling prompts with the Wild Wonder Foundation (and the Art Toolkit Team has been sketching along.⁠

Scroll through to see what we’ve sketched so far! You can view the expanded prompts at https://www.wildwonder.org/nj25.

Pictured:⁠
Prompt 1: Sketch your tools! (Maria Coryell-Martin)⁠
Prompt 2: Create your palette of place (Maria Coryell-Martin)⁠
Prompt 3: Climb the tallest thing around and sketch the view (Maria Coryell-Martin)⁠
Prompt 5: Moon journal (Darin Reid)⁠
Prompt 6: Immerse yourself in the elements (Jemma Pereña)⁠
Prompt 7: Nature discovery walk (Jemma Pereña)⁠

Share your work with us by using Wild Wonder’s hashtag: .

12/10/2025

Our very talented retail staff have been working on a collaborative sketchbook over the past few months, using demo supplies in our shop.⁠

The sketchbook, which Morgan Terry, Jemma Pereña, and Ron Ransom worked on concurrently, is a fascinating blend of styles, media, and personalities; each artist has his or her preferred subject matter and materials, and each takes up space on the page in a distinctive way. ⁠
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Morgan Terry, our Retail and Customer Service Specialist, says it has been a practice of sketching more freely and trusting “that it’s okay to show my messy process to my sketchbook buddies.” The artists drew inspiration from a Peter Han video where he used a Japanese accordion notebook.⁠

The Moleskine Art Plus Japanese Album, available both in our retail shop and on our website, measures 5" x 8¼" and fits into an A5 Art Toolkit. Its hard cover and slim width allows it to be slipped easily into any bag and carried unobtrusively for impromptu sketching. Its creamy pages are 90lb (165 gsm), making it perfect for light washes and mixed media, and it opens flat at 180°.⁠
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We recommend it for fans of the Hahnemühle Zig Zag Books, for sketching a sprawling panoramic landscape or cityscape, for a series of sketches on a theme—such as portraits or a garden journal—or for making your own collaborative sketchbook with friends! ⁠
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Check out the full blog post (https://arttoolkit.com/blog/2025/12/2025-creative-wins-from-the-art-toolkit-team/) for more images from this epic work-in-progress. (And if you visit the shop, be sure to ask the retail staff for a peek at the shared sketchbook!)⁠
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Artists:⁠
Morgan Terry⁠
Jemma Pereña⁠
Ron Ransom

12/05/2025

The end of the year is a great time to reflect, and we at Art Toolkit have an annual tradition of asking our team to share something we created, dreamed up, practiced, or produced that we take pride in.

Chelsea Heron, our Office Manager, shares her creative win below:
My creative win for 2025 was taking Mini ZigZag Books with me on a couple of trips and actually filling them! This might be my new favorite way to capture highlights from my outdoor adventures and getaways. A bonus win for me is having the courage to share what I captured and created! Forever a student in this life, I am always reminding myself to release perfection and embrace my ever-changing creative process.

To check out more of our staff's creative wins, including a shared Moleskine Japanese Album, experimentations with Washi Tape, and forays into watercolor and woodworking, check out our blog post here: https://arttoolkit.com/blog/2025/12/2025-creative-wins-from-the-art-toolkit-team/

What were some of your 2025 creative wins? Let us know in the comments below!

12/02/2025

The Draw Your Adventures Set is back for a limited run for the holidays!
https://arttoolkit.com/supplies/draw-your-adventures-by-samantha-dion-baker/

Set Contents:
• Draw Your Adventures by Samantha Dion Baker
• Micron fineliner pen
• Blackwing Pearl pencil
• Aquash Mini Water Brush
• Stillman & Birn Beta Series Softcover Sketchbook
• The Explore Palette with a custom-printed drawstring bag.

Draw Your Adventures is a guide to approaching your daily life through an explorer’s lens. Author-illustrator Samantha Dion Baker shares prompts, reflections, and inspiration with a focus on adventure, in every sense of the word. Whether you’re heading off on a big trip or simply walking out your front door, her book encourages you to pause, notice, and draw what you see.

We have loved collaborating on projects with Samantha over the years! Learn more on her website, sdionbaker.com.

12/01/2025

Hosted by Wild Wonder Foundation, we invite you to follow along with a series of nature journaling prompts—one for every day in December—from Art Toolkit Founder Maria Coryell-Martin!⁠

Prompts range from “Frost Patterns” to “Freshen Your Palette,” inviting⁠
observational sketching and engagement with your favorite adventure ⁠
sketching tools every day. Stay tuned to Wild Wonder’s prompts page for the update on December 1st, and browse those from January through November at your own pace! Visit https://www.wildwonder.org/nj25 for details.⁠

Pictured: Methow Snow, watercolor by Maria Coryell-Martin.

11/29/2025

Art Toolkit Ambassador Sophia Trinh has a new post on our blog about the trials of starting (and finishing!) a travel sketchbook. Here is an excerpt below:

”I have a confession to make. I’ve never completed a sketchbook from start to finish. I’ve always preferred loose sheets, torn paper, and scraps from old scratchpads. While I have started sketchbooks before, the idea of committing to the first page, let alone the last, always felt intimidating. But in 2026, I’d like to change that.

I was recently gifted a Hahnemühle 100% Cotton Watercolor Book in the square format, and I brought it on a trip to Türkiye and Greece. Below are my reflections on beginning a sketchbook, the lessons I learned, and a glimpse into the pages I created along the way.

In Istanbul, my husband and I woke up early to visit the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, and the Basilica Cistern. I was moved by the architecture, the warm ombré colors of the Hagia Sophia’s walls, and the beautiful coexistence of Islamic and Christian histories.

On the 17th, we took the ferry to Santorini. I sketched on the ride over as the island slowly came into view. As you can see in my map, the island is shaped like a sweeping “C,” the result of ancient volcanic activity.

I loved capturing the contrast of white homes and blue domes stacked along the cliffs. One of my favorite sketches was of Skaros Rock. The hardest part of painting in Santorini wasn’t finding inspiration—it was the wind, which turned each page into a small adventure.”

Check out Sophia's blog post to read the full blog post and see more of Sophia’s beautiful art from her trip! https://arttoolkit.com/blog/2025/11/completing-my-first-watercolor-sketchbook-lessons-from-turkiye-and-greece/

11/28/2025

Join us at our retail shop on Saturday, December 6th, from 2pm–8pm for our Winter Wishes Community Card Making event during ArtWalk!

As we approach the winter season, explore watercolor and embrace the coziness of our shop while decorating cards for a friend or family member, or to brighten the day of a community member! Sip a cup of hot cocoa as our on-site artists guide you through making festive cards in our cozy shop. We will provide a range of supplies to demo, from paper, gift tags, stencils, stickers, markers, and of course, our palettes filled with colorful watercolor paints for you to enjoy. We invite you to leave a card in our shop’s holiday mailbox that we will distribute later in the month.

Our Winter Wishes mailbox will stay open for contributions through Sunday, December 21st, so visit our shop and ask our retail staff about decorating a card this month!

Let’s have fun making something beautiful together this holiday. We hope to see you at ArtWalk on December 6th!

Find out more here: https://arttoolkit.com/events/2025/12/06/winter-wishes-community-card-making/

11/28/2025

Our holiday sale ends soon! Grab your gifts now through November 30th at midnight Pacific, and use the code 25THANKS15 for a 15% discount on all eligible items!

In-person shoppers can mention the code to get 15% off everything in our retail shop—we hope to see you this weekend!

Shop here: https://arttoolkit.com

11/24/2025

Join Maria Coryell-Martin, expeditionary artist and Art Toolkit Founder, for her Sketching Winter Landscapes workshop with the Wild Wonder Foundation on December 4th, 2025 at 4:30pm Pacific. The live online class is free to attend, with a suggested donation of $25, and registration is required.

https://www.wildwonder.org/store/p/maria-winter-sketching

This is a fun 90-minute workshop where you will learn tools and techniques for sketching outdoors in winter, whether you have just five minutes or all day! Discover ideas for minimal art kits, how to create a ”palette of place,” and tips for developing quick sketches and notes.

Address

Port Townsend, WA

Website

https://art-toolkit.com/

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Sketch Anywhere, Anytime

At Art Toolkit, we believe that art can be not only a tool for self-expression, but for communication, exploration, and scientific inquiry. Our purpose is to empower and inspire our customers to create art every day by providing well-designed tools and materials.

In 2004, upon graduating from Carleton College, artist Maria Coryell-Martin embarked on a year-long Watson Fellowship to explore remote landscapes through art. This experience inspired a resolve to continue working as an expeditionary artist with a focus on polar and glacier science, and to inspire environmental awareness in audiences of all ages.

Maria’s travels have brought her face-to-face with polar bears, leopard seals, emperor penguins, and narwhals. She was inspired to create a more compact sketching and painting kit after a memorable experience juggling clumsy sketching tools while crawling in the sand for hours to monitor walruses on a small island in eastern Greenland.

Many prototypes, field-tests, and customer reviews later, the Art Toolkit and Pocket Palette have evolved into a versatile sketching and painting system for artists of all ages and skill-levels.