This is a recording of our live Sketchbook Kaigi demo on Developing Your Daily Art Habit with April Wu!

Making nature spots is a super simple way to scratch the itch to paint and document your adventure in a quick, unique way.

Everyone relates to art in a unique way, so we are starting off the new year by sharing our staff’s (mostly artistic) goals for the year ahead.

Happy New Year! Today we’re reflecting on 2022 and setting goals and intentions for the new year.

We have curated a steadily-growing list of our favorite additional accessories to take on the go.

Art Toolkit Ambassador Lisa Spangler demonstrates color mixing and guides us through creating homemade holiday cards!

We offer Art Toolkits with all the essentials, but they are also 100% customizable! Here’s how we recommend getting started.

We love what an accordion book can bring to art adventures! The expandable format is perfect for telling a story, batching thematic observations of the world around you, or capturing a whole experience in one sketchbook.

We invite you to try a fun and meditative approach to exploring place and color. Art Toolkit Ambassador Nikki Frumkin shared this exercise on a recent Hike and Draw event in Seattle.

Recently, we’ve been experimenting with the properties of paints, and this week we are focusing on granulation with the very special Grow Untamed Palette and a selection of Daniel Smith watercolors!

We asked our friend Myrna Keliher at Expedition Press for some lines of poetry that have been a source of inspiration to her.

In this video, Julie Beeler from the Mushroom Color Atlas talks all about mushroom watercolor pigments with Maria.

Our brush of choice is always a Rosemary & Co brush. They’re beautifully made in the UK by a small but dedicated team of artisans, and the quality is always top-notch.

Whether you’re limited on time or your subject likes to move around a lot, gestural sketches are a fast and energetic way to capture the essence of a subject in a short amount of time.

We would love to share some fun ideas and tips for how you might personalize your Art Toolkit.

So, what is an Art Toolkit? Here is an in-depth tour of our kits and some ideas for filling them with your favorite supplies!

Car trips can be a fantastic way to capture the world and the feel of moving through it, and an Art Toolkit can help make it simple.

We’re inviting you to step outside of what’s familiar and try drawing with both hands… simultaneously!

Getting fur right is tricky, so we came up with some helpful tips for recreating that soft, directional texture on paper!

Sophia shows how she uses gouache (pronounced like “squash” but with a “g”) with our new Grow Untamed Palette.

If you’re ever looking to stretch your observational skills, we would like to recommend drawing upside down!

Ambassador Sophia Trinh has been thinking a lot about imposter syndrome lately. Her favorite tool to combat that feeling might surprise you: waterproof pens!

What could be a more fitting way to celebrate our planet than by deepening your knowledge of the patch of Earth on which you live?⁠ Here are 20 opportunities to explore deeper into the place you live through a series of questions. You can use each question as a potential nature journal prompt, an artistic prompt, or a way to get to know the world better.⁠

We have quite a variety of drawing tools in our shop! From fountain pens to calligraphy felt tips, pencils and mechanical pencils, we curated our collection to make sure there’s a tool for every type of sketcher.

Our Ambassador Nikki Frumkin recently caught the Golden Hour from a fire lookout. Here are her tips for capturing a glowing evening.

Our new empty palette option allows you to build precisely the palette you want. But how do you know what that is? Setting up a palette is personal and depends on your preferences as an artist. Our range of palette and pan sizes lets you customize your layout to your needs.

Refillable ink cartridges are a way to be a little greener and use ink that you can’t find in cartridge form. They are a little tricky to fill, so we made a tutorial to demystify the process.

It takes time to develop your own style. For many artists, creating starts as an imitation of work they already like, and there is nothing wrong with that! But how do you make the transition from being inspired by to just being inspired?

We sent our Ambassador Lisa Spangler an Explore Palette to test out, and she made this helpful guide for getting to know a new palette.

Watch Maria and April Wu from TRAVELER’S COMPANY USA as they talk about their limited edition palette collaboration, and Maria shares her favorite adventure sketching techniques.

We love combining a campout with an art session, but we know it can be easy to forget essential items, especially if you’re on a spur-of-the-moment adventure!

In this video, Joe “Paper Nerd” Domeier from Hahnemühle USA shares his vast paper knowledge with Maria!

We have amazing staff members who all have diverse artistic interests and use their Art Toolkits in different ways.

We are thrilled to announce that Sophia Trinh is joining our team of Ambassadors!⁠ In this video Sophia shows us two ways she uses salt in her watercolor paintings.

A few weeks ago, our friend and Art Toolkit ambassador Lisa Spangler taught a workshop at Nash Prairie Preserve near the Gulf Coast of Texas, an extraordinary place protected by The Nature Conservancy. Here, Lisa shares some exercises that you can use to get to know wildflowers in your area, wherever you are!

In this demo, Maria shows two techniques for sketching feathers.

Anna talks about her creative practice and leads us through making hand-cut and painted spring flowers.

Lisa guides us through creating lovely Valentine’s Day cards using her Pocket Palette.

Samantha and Maria play with color, working on a prompt from Samantha’s New Book, Draw Your World.

Lisa demonstrates how to make small pamphlet books and shares tips on mixing triads, featuring our Greenleaf & Blueberry CMYK Palette.

Claire shares some of her favorite materials and go-to techniques for simplifying a mountain scene.

One of the great things about sharing our supplies with the world has been seeing all the clever ways artists are making use of them.

Follow along as Mike shares his Sketchnoting techniques with me in this recording of our live demo.

Today’s book recommendation comes from our Marketing Coordinator, Nhatt Nichols.

Jess and I explore our brand new Calligraphy Palette collaborations, and share a few more surprises we have in the works.

Watch as Amanda guides me through a series of lettering exercises.

You can now find our book recommendations on Bookshop.org.

When painting evergreens, it helps to have a few premixed shades of green, especially for sketching on the go...

So much of watercolor involves attention to shapes! I like to work from large to small shapes and often start painting the negative spaces between and around objects.

Alaskan artist Jill Richie creates connections between humans and the environment with her plein air studies. Learn about her family quarantine art project, the importance of learning from your environment, and the virtues of not being too fussy with supplies or results.

Mike and I sketch breakfast and talk about his book, Sketch Now, Think Later.

Barbara and I played with color and form and talked about how freeing it can be to create.

Max Romey is an artist, videographer, and trail runner who is sketching his way through Alaska.

Join me and Jane Blundell as we talk about our latest collaboration, the Ultimate Sketching Palette.

Join me and Liz Steel as we sketch the Villa di Maser building in Italy, using some of the techniques she has developed for her book, 5 Minute Architecture.

Sometimes you need just a little extra space to make precisely the shade you need.

See my workspace, favorite tools, and sketches from various expeditions.

White gouache can be a fantastic tool for adding final highlights to sketches. It can make cat whiskers, snow, or sailboats pop right off the page, and I especially love working with it on toned paper.

Join me as I sketch birds with nature journaling aficionado John (Jack) Muir Laws.

My friend Che Lopez and I explore the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen.

We have summer reading on our minds! We'll be sharing inspiration from our bookshelf over the next few months and would love your recommendations.

Lara Call Gastinger is the chief illustrator for the published Flora of Virginia

Russ (@pathlesspedaled) creates vibrant, loose watercolors that capture a sense of the freedom felt riding a bike.

Chelsea shares ideas and techniques for painting sunflowers, as well as her approach to lettering.

This is a recording of an Instagram Live Demo with artist Che Lopez.

This is a recording of an Instagram Live Demo with artist Suhita Shirodkar.

Symi Jackson of Rosemary & Co Brushes chats with me about Rosemary’s line of travel brushes.

Paul Wang talks with me about flexing your creative muscles.

A live dmeo with Jess Greenleaf, founder of Greenleaf & Blueberry.

Artist and friend Jane Blundell talks with me about exploring triads in watercolor.

Explore creating tiny paintings with Seattle-based artist Katharina Stoll.

Join Maria live online as she shares techniques for painting minimal atmospheric landscapes in watercolor.

A live demo on Instagram with artist Samantha Dion Baker.

Join Maria as she paints with other artists, every Friday for a new live demo series.

It’s been nearly a year since we ditched plastic in our packaging to move to more eco-conscious materials, and we haven’t looked back.

Adventures to the far corners of the earth can be exciting and romantic, but aren’t necessarily something you can fit into a typical weekend, much less an afternoon! There are lots of ways to find smaller adventures if you’re willing to look for them.

A new limited-edition series of color collections: Palettes of Place.

How many possible combinations of pans in a Pocket Palette?

Chelsea Ward (aka @sketchynotions) is an artist and plant-lover who creates colorful and whimsical sketches and stationery.

Ten years on, a look at the evolution of the Pocket Palette.