An artist’s perspective of painting a watercolor sketch on her Duotone Forest A5 Art Toolkit in her lap.

About Art Toolkit

At Art Toolkit, we manufacture and curate compact and rugged tools for sketching and painting, from urban to wilderness adventures. Whether through our expedition-proven art supplies and accessories, online and in-person workshops, demos, and events, or sharing resources with our community, we strive to inspire people everywhere to create art every day.

Multiple hands reaching for Art Toolkits

What We Make

We provide our namesake Art Toolkits—rugged, portable, all-in-one sketching kits—and manufacture compact, configurable paint palettes. Our online and retail shops also feature a curated selection of our favorite lightweight supplies for sketching with ink and watercolor, including paints, brushes, and sketchbooks.

Our work is made possible by our small team of intrepid and enthusiastic artists, educators, and designers. We encourage a collaborative and open work environment where everyone’s voice matters. We’re grateful for our creative community near and far!

A smiling artist in a bright yellow jacket and blue beanie stands on snow, painting at an easel. A backpack with art supplies is nearby, and a rocky mountain landscape is visible in the background under a cloudy sky.

Our Story

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 challenging experience juggling her 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.

A man in a green hoodie and beanie laughs while embracing a woman with curly hair wrapped in a gray scarf. Both are smiling joyfully in a cozy indoor setting, surrounded by books and plants.

Before joining Art Toolkit full-time in 2019, co-founder Darin Reid spent his summers in the waters of the Salish Sea teaching sea kayaking, and designing and building websites in the colder months. After years of behind the scenes collaboration, Darin is now our Operations Director and carries his Pocket Art Toolkit everywhere he goes.

A bright store display featuring a wooden table with various notebooks and books arranged neatly. A miniature easel with a painted scene is prominently placed in the center, surrounded by colorful stationery items on shelves in the background.

Our Shop

After four years in a little loft off of Sims Way, Art Toolkit relocated to downtown Port Townsend, where we opened our doors on Leap Day of 2024 and welcomed a new chapter for our business. Our shop includes an extended retail space where you can handle sketchbooks, test a range of sketching supplies, and demo our magnetic paint palettes.

Learn more about the our shop here.

An artist sites on a rock, dipping a paintbrush in a Pocket Palette.

Art Toolkit Newsletter

Sign up to hear about our latest supplies, tips and techniques for field art, and special offers.

Join now and we’ll send you our free Tools for Observation mini-series. Follow along with Maria as she shares supplies, tips on contour and gesture sketching, and inspiration for composition!