Maria Coryell-Martin sees art as a tool for communication, education, and connecting people - S13/E04

Sketchnote Army Podcast

In this episode, Maria Coryell-Martin shares how her passion emerged out of collaborating with scientists to help tell their stories through art.

Sponsored by Concepts

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Running Order

• Intro
• Welcome
• Who is Maria Coryell-Martin?
• Origin Story
• Maria’s current work
• Sponsor: Concepts
• Tips
• Tools
• Where to find Maria
• Outro

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• ArtToolkit
• Art Tool kit on Instagram
• Art tool kit recommend series
• Art Toolkit Newsletter
• Juneau Certified Research Program
• Brushmaker story

Get 10% discount at arttoolkit.com with code SKETCHNOTE10 through June 1st, 2023.

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• All-in-one Zipper pouch
• Pentel water brushes
• Waterproof pen
• Sketchbook
• Sharpie pen
• Pentel brush pen
• Pelikano fountain pens
• Copic multiliners
• Helvetica pencils
• Rosemary & Co travel watercolor brushes
• collapsible cup
• No-needle syringe
• Binder clips
• Rubber bands
• Paper towel
• iPhone mini
• Procreate

Tips

1. Use a timer and set yourself a very small amount of time to do something.
2. Give yourself the opportunity to play with color, what you see, and don't worry about composition.
3. Paying attention to the world and just letting yourself start with notes just to start that attention.
4. Trust the process.
5. Practice not perfection.

Credits

Producer: Alec Pulianas
Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer
Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro

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Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike and I'm here with my friend Maria Coryell-Martin. Maria, it's so good to have you on the show.

Maria Coryell-Martin: Oh, I'm thrilled to be here, Mike. Thank you so much for having me.

MR: You're so welcome. I had an opportunity to work with you on your YouTube channel, I think, was that last year or 2021? I can't remember now. It's so all a blur. We had a blast working together and you popped in mind for this season, and I said I need to have Maria on to talk about the work she's doing because she's a really interesting person. It's gonna stretch our listeners' minds a little bit further, which is always a good thing. Why don't you begin by telling us who you are and what you do?

MC-M: Great. Well, my name is Maria and I'm an expeditionary artist and also the founder of Art Toolkit. I wear a lot of hats in my work.

MR: Exactly.

MC-M: Business owner and artist. The expeditionary art part came first. I've always been passionate about art, science, and education. And using a sketchbook is really how I've interpreted the world, and going out and just nonstop sketching ever since I was really little. I brought a few things to share so those of you who pop over to YouTube later.

My father was a scientist and so I grew up really curious about his work and the scientific process. Part of his work brought him to the Arctic. He was studying the formation of sea ice. We grew up with Arctic parkas in the closet, and I remember big maps on the ceiling of my room.

His work also brought him to Japan where he was invited to teach. This had a big influence on me because we lived down the street from a brush maker in Tokyo. The brush I'm holding up right now is one that he made out of my own hair before I left when I was, I think 11 years old. I would go up there and paint with him and my mom would help, but we didn't speak much of the same language, but the connecting over art was a really important part of my experience.

He made this brush as becoming of age gift for me out of my own hair which he told me was a tradition in Japan. Ever since I was young, I've really known that art has this important place and who I am and how I experience the world, and how I can interact with it. That's where that idea of art as a tool started for me as a tool for communication, for education, for learning, for connecting, and haven't really stopped with that.

MR: That's really great. And that's led, of course, to Art Toolkit, which is your business that sells materials that encourage that expeditionary art mindset or activity.

MC-M: Yeah. With expeditionary art, I went to Carleton College. I grew up in Seattle, Carleton's in Minnesota, and really enjoyed traveling in part, maybe to get away from some of those Minnesotan winters, but had the opportunity to do some terrific study abroad programs, including the South Pacific, which was an art and printmaking program, Mali, West Africa, to study French and local culture and dialects languages. And took myself on some independent projects.

Everywhere I went, the sketchbook again was such a part of what I did and how I experienced the world. After graduating Carleton, I had what's called a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to travel and paint for a year. The Watson basically funds dreams for unique opportunity for 50 select graduates of this consortium of colleges.

My particular dream was to travel to remote regions and paint and learn about how the landscape impacted me and the artists I can meet, how the landscape was reflected through their art. Long story short, I got a lot of practice in painting and traveling, and really my passion emerged outta that of collaborating with scientists whenever possible to help tell their story through art 'cause I've always loved science.

The Art Toolkit came because I had this puzzle of traveling with art supplies and needing to keep everything portable. As an artist, part of just who I am is I really like to make things and to try and make things better. I was always tinkering every trip with the tools I had.

I'm holding up now my first little watercolor palette I made, which just of out of an Altoids tin. And inside it is Sculpey, which I pushed a pencil in to make little holes and spray paint it. You see, Sculpey is really heavy, and so, it's not really like a backpacking pallet, and it's a little bulky.

I thought, "I want stuff to be all in one, what can I do better?" Here's another one. This pallet is out of a Lamy safari pencil box or open box. I used this time little plastic pans that I could glue inside the tin. Some of them I put on magnets and held a lot more colors. It's lighter weight than my old mint tin, but still heavy.

I had a trip to Eastern Greenland in 2010 with a walrus biologist. It was just really fun trip. We did a lot of sneaking up on walruses to observe them. The scientists were taking tissue samples, which was a cool process because they basically modified a crossbow to shoot a little tiny metal plug into—like imagine the tip of a pencil, you know? That was hollow.

It'd take just a little plug of tissue out of the animal to get a little DNA sample. The walrus were sleeping in the sun, and they would grumble when they got poked. And then they'd fall back asleep, like, not a big deal. But sneaking up on these animals, we'd wear these zipper suits like machinist suits over our big warm gear, and we'd be crawling into sand so we wouldn't scare them.

This is where the quantity of gear I had with me was really confronting practicality because I had my camera and an audio recorder and my sketchbook and my trusty watercolor box, but it would wiggle down as I was falling in the sand and keeping track of it felt like a challenge.

That was the summer that Art Toolkit really started where I came back and my final watercolor palette that set the stage was this little business card tin, I'd adapted and found, okay, now I've got a pallet that can fit inside a zipper pouch and I can take anywhere a lot easier. I started making them myself with the help of a local company that helped with the pouches and making the little pallets. That was over 10 years ago.

MR: Wow. Wow. That's really cool. That's I think the best kind of tools where it's not just something you make up and hope that it fits. It's like you actually field-tested everything to get to the point of like, okay, this is really working. I'm sure you field-tested that little business card thing as well to make sure everything worked. Just your nature, right?

When you buy something from that a company or a maker, you take advantage of all that fieldwork that you've done, so you know it's gonna work when you get in that situation, it's not gonna fail you.

MC-M: Yeah. I try and solve problems for myself. Then there's a point at which you think, with my work as an expeditionary artist that was around my passion for art, science, and education and wanting to go out, but I kept thinking, hey, I really wanna help share this with others and wanna help inspire and empower others for their own education or their own adventures and just going out.

And so, I wanted to make tools to share and then kept making them better. Since then, we've done a lot of adapting to this palette from modifying it and changing the materials. We have them in three sizes. As if that wasn't small enough, we've got this really one size because it's so cute. I really like cute little things. My daughter teases me 'cause I'm always seeing your little cute things. Then we've got one that is about twice as big, but still slim.

MR: Pretty thin. Slimness. I've got one of your kits, probably your smallest kit which includes a notebook. It's got a pallet and a water brush, and then it's all inside of a nice, pretty small, like a nylon zipper case. It all fits in there. Yep. Right there.

We'll have links to Art Toolkit so you can go—if you're listening and you're not looking at anything, you're in the car or something. When you get to your destination, you can pop up a link and look at the breadth of tools. I think the other thing I like about the way you approach things is, well, of course, you're making tools that are tested and purpose-built 'cause that's really cool.

The other thing I like is that you really focus on education. Like, having me on to talk about sketchnoting with people that like your tools or you're always doing stuff and then sharing. I think that's a really big key. It's not just that you're making tools, but you're actually showing them in practice and how to use them. It just makes for a whole integrated way of looking at what you're doing, which is really cool.

MC-M: Oh, I'm so glad you appreciate that. It's been just central to our values and then the values now of Art Toolkit, you know, it's grown much beyond just me now about, I don't know what it was now, maybe when my daughter was two or three, she's seven and a half now.

I realize I needed help with shipping and assembling and brought my mother-in-law in so to be my shipper, and she's still our primary shipper. Finally, got my husband on, and now we've got a team of about eight folks who work, some full-time, some part-time in making it, but really trying to keep those core values.

I just think it's so neat. I get a little thrill when I see people out in the world and I get so inspired by other people's work. I suppose it's a little bit selfish in wanting that inspiration, but then the fun of sharing it and delighting.

I tell you, Mike, the words that were mantras for me through the whole pandemic was just community and creativity. It was just like nourishing. I know that was the point where we connected. It's been something that's really grounded me.

Well, that's great. I know sketchnote community is in a similar place. We all care for each other and lots of sharing and support and encouragement. The same thing happened for me kinda leaning into that community when the pandemic happened, knowing that there were other people like me that needed a connection, and so, well, let's make stuff, let's provide that.

It sounds like you're on a similar path. That's really cool. You talked a little bit briefly about living in Japan with your parents and getting a brush made from your hair. I'm gonna now switch into your origin story. Now, you don't have to go and tell us every detail, we talked a little bit as we prepared for this. What were the key moments in your life that led you to where you're at and maybe some that specifically, I guess, integrated visual thinking into those decisions?

I'm sure that living in Japan had a huge impact on the way you thought about visual thinking and observation and the way different cultures are and probably led to your interest in travel. There's probably a bunch of things that it probably influenced. Maybe start from when you were a little girl and became aware of the world and you're traveling with your dad and take us from there.

MC-M: That's a great question. A few key moments come to mind. One was, so I've been to Japan four times and the first trip I was in grade school, I think. I don't know if it was summer after third grade or first grade, I can't quite remember.

But the sketchbook for me then was just such a direct communication tool because I'd be sitting around with kids and I was out there with my family, but we spent a lot of time with other families and kids of that my parents were meeting and working with. I just remember describing things like, how we got to school. And they'd draw a picture of how they got to school, and I draw a picture of how I got to school or like what we ate.

It was such this means of connecting and just like you said, that visual language. That stayed with me because it's brought joy and connection, and just like having conversations through a sketchbook. In high school, I loved art and I did a lot of outdoor education, but I really vividly remember, and I wish I'd grabbed this out of my files to show you, integrating art into my other classes as much as I could.

For example, I had a mythology class where we'd have to write or review stories and instead of just, typing up or writing up a report, I put together a little book out of greeting cards, which I like sewed together and drew tiny little cartoon pictures with the whole stories for the whole assignment. Then I stuck in an envelope and gave it to the teacher who really enjoyed it.

For me, it was a way of storytelling through art in my own way, and it helped me learn also. Which I think really relates to like the sketch noting of just visual processing and attention. Then another really formative moment was I spent two summers with the Juneau Icefield Research Program in Southeast Alaska.

Each was a full summer one as a student in high school and one later coming back to help be a staff and artisan residence. That first summer, especially the ice field was this really stunning environment of rock and ice. Living in this environment, in these little cabins and traveling with a really neat group of people, science-oriented, also learning about field safety, so doing a lot of practice around crevice rescue and skiing and being safe in this place.

And I just remember really coming away with, meanwhile, I'm always sketching, that idea of just coming at a subject from different perspectives. As an artist appreciating light and shadow, shapes, this sort of visual vocabulary. Then as a scientist, thinking about the why and asking questions.

For example, crevices and why they're forming where they are, these practical elements. Then from this wilderness experience of how to safely navigate it, and travel it. Then also there's this emotional experience of this space that could change dramatically from this really wide-open landscape where you're skiing 10 miles and you can see your destination, but it feels like you're moving at the snail’s pace or having the fog come in and all of a sudden, you're on the inside of a ping pong ball.

Emotionally can be this entirely different feeling may be from going from this vast spaciousness to just this insular world. That made me just think a lot about how much I enjoy learning all these different aspects, and that's really was brought me to this expeditionary art of art, science, and education.

MR: The sense that I'm getting from you to this point is you have a real fascination with layering. It's not enough that you learn, it's not enough that you're observing scientific phenomena, it's not enough that you're experiencing something emotionally, then you're layering on this art layer to try and capture it or express it or explain it. There's all this layering going on from what I hear.

MC-M: Yeah. It's really neat when you get to be around people who are experts in those other layers because people of all sorts can just be the most delightful nerds, myself included. They're so passionate about little things that they know so much about, and just find it a delight to connect with those people and try and hear what they know and understand and use art as a jumping-off point to try and share that.

MR: It's gotta be interesting to be able to express their nerdery about their specific thing in art, and then they see it and like, "Yeah, you get it." That's right. Maybe you even observe something because you're doing that art that they maybe didn't make those connections or maybe it sort of became clear for them. I imagine that's probably happened.

MC-M: Yeah. Yeah.

MR: That's really cool. Cool. Well, let's jump into what's the project that you're working on now that you're excited about to bring us right up to the present and share some detail.

MC-M: Well, all sorts of projects going on. On the art level that's been something for my personal art practice that comes in and fits and starts now. I had a really lovely residency over the summer in Norway, which was an opportunity just to sink back into some of my painting practice. And so I'm excited to take some of that Norwegian work and develop it into larger paintings.

I often like to work in the field, you work really quickly or might be filling up little sketchbooks. Here's an example from little small, just playful sketchbooks. I'm holding up one from some sketches in Alaska I did with a scientist that are—

MR: Oh yeah, look at that.

MC-M: Very much kind of little storytelling elements of about the project. Then in my studio I like to work on a much bigger scale often to try and catch some of the emotional sense of what I feel. Then on Art Toolkit side, there's all sorts of nonstop projects there, but I really enjoy developing new products and collaborations. I'll have to just share that there's some new paint-filled pallets that we're working on. We've got some variations on—oh, I don't even know if I should say yet, but if you stay tuned to Art Toolkit.

MR: You'll find out. Yeah, get on the mailing list.

MC-M: This spring, there's some a few things coming out that I'm really excited about.

MR: Sweet. That's really great. That's great to hear. You're like me, you got lots of irons in the fire keeping things moving, so that's pretty cool.

MC-M: Yeah. Yeah. I will say will be announcing our early spring workshop soon, and that's something I'm excited about too, is getting to connect with other artists who may wanna come and help inspire our Art Toolkit audience.

MR: Excellent, excellent.

MC-M: We'll have those coming up soon too.

MR: Great. Let's switch to tools a little bit. You probably got lots of tools you could show. I guess we do have to remember this is typically about an hour show, so I'll have to cap you a little bit. But maybe you put in the context of someone's listening and they're like, expeditionary art or visualizing nature.

Maybe they're in an urban environment and they don't think about nature, but the reality is nature is all around you, birds and trees, and it would be interesting maybe the start observing like, well, what nature is in my urban environment that I could capture? Or maybe I get out of the city and I take a sketchbook or something along.

Maybe talk—when we talked before you were able to provide me with a little starter kit to try. Which is really great. Maybe talk about if someone's interested in getting into it, what would be the right tools that they might consider? Maybe that's the way to go about it.

MC-M: Well, I think like the sketchbook it's similar to what people say about a camera, that the best camera you have is the one you have with you. The best sketchbook is the one you're gonna be able to have with you. For me, that's where having this little all-in-one zipper pouch of the Art Toolkit, which we offer in two sizes really came in because I just wanted this like no excuses kit.

My no-excuses kit is usually the small one. I carry a bigger one when I wanna head out with more goodies and more things to share. But just to be really no excuses. In this kit, one of my favorite things is a water brush. I typically use Pentel water brushes. They're really durable. I find that you don't often clog. Last a long time. If you haven't used a water brush, you untwist the caps, you can fill them with water. Really cold places, you can mix it in with some vodka or gin to help lower the freezing temperature.

MR: Your paint freeze.

MC-M: Paint freeze. Another perk of the pentel that I like is they're oval, so they're not gonna start rolling downhill as quickly.

MR: Fall into a crevasse or something.

MC-M: I always find a water brush is handy. The most fundamental, all you need is a pencil or pen and a sketchbook. But I'll show you a little just what is in my kit, I suppose. I like waterproof pen. I often sketch straight with pen because there's just the immediacy of putting your marks on paper, and I really try and embrace practice, not perfection, of not worrying about lines being in the wrong place.

If I did something and I stop and measure, I just draw the line where I want it and only color and the lines I want to. It's part of the process. Practice, not perfection is a really big mantra for me. I love a waterproof pen, and depending on where I'm traveling, I might carry one that's—I don't like disposable things in general, but a little Sharpie pen. Sometimes traveling refillable pens can be a little explosive with going over mountain passes or altitude. Another waterproof pen I really enjoy is this Pentel brush pen.

MR: I love those.

MC-M: A little more like dynamic mark, and they're also waterproof. Then I have a little collection of fountain pens. I'll sometimes carry—this is a little Pelikano fountain pen by Pilot. That's pretty cute and not too expensive too, so if you are not gonna worry about losing it too much. Copic multiliners are another waterproof pen I like. These are kind of a in between, see if I can pop this out. Something that is disposable and reusable. It's got a very large ink cart that you can replace and you can replace the nibs.

That's a little variety of pens. I've got pen, water, brush. If I do carry a pencil, I sometimes carry an automatic pencil. This is a little heavy, but—oh, I love these pencils. Mike, they're Helvetica pencils. We have the automatic ones and then we also have just wooden pencils. They're just these gorgeous pencils made in Japan. I have just a gorgeous feel and I'm a real sucker for good aesthetics and I really like their aesthetics.

MR: I'm a mechanical pencil fan as well. I keep usually soft lead and like thick. I think I got Faber-Castell, it's like 1.4 millimeter, so it's really super thick. I can show you what that looks like. It's super thick lead and it's soft. If I'm gonna do pencil, I want it to be soft and feel really loosey-goosey. I dunno if that's a technical term, but I tends to like, I can flow around and I don't worry so much. It's not about perfection, so.

MC-M: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, this is one I bought years ago with a big lid lead too, that I don't sketch with very much, but I picked it up 'cause it was just so beautiful with a very big lead.

MR: I think that's technically called a lead holder. I think it moves beyond a mechanical pencil to lead holder.

MC-M: I think that serves it right.

MR: The grasping things on it, right?

MC-M: A couple other things In my carry-everywhere kit, if I've got enough time, I do really enjoy travel watercolor brushes. A brand that I'm a big fan of and we carry, Art Toolkit is Rosemary and Co. These are made in England by a small family company, not terribly small, they've grown many over the years, but Rosemary still runs the company. They have a whole variety of shapes and sizes, but the big key is that when you're done painting with 'em, you can take it apart and put a cap over the point so that they won't be damaged in transit.

To paint with 'em, I carry a little tiny collapsible cup that we offer on Art Toolkit website. I can pour a little water and sit down a minute. Sometimes for my water brush, I carry a little tiny no-needle syringe to squeeze out the water and pop it in my brush. I always carry little extra binder clips, sometimes rubber bands too for wind. They're really useful because you can also clip your palette to your sketchbook. So, if you're out, you can have it on one side and sketch on the other.

MR: Got it.

MC-M: I do that a lot, sketching standing up, or making sure something won't blow away. Finally, a paper towel to wipe my brush on. The paper towels I use, I've been using these for years and years and years. They're shop towels, blue shop towels that you can pick up at a hardware store. They're just so soft and durable that you tease them out and reuse them. I really like the feel and trying to reuse them.

MR: Cool.

MC-M: That's what's in my daily carry. For folks getting started, your daily carry can just be as simple as like I said, you know, a pen and a pencil. I think water-soluble pens can be fun with a little water brush just for black-and-white paintings. Just keeping things simple with what feels like you've got space for in your daily bag.

MR: Well, I've got my little toolkit right here for those on video so you can see. There it's. I got a little ruler in there, my syringe, and stuff. It's been a great little kit.

MC-M: Oh, I'm so glad. I love having a ruler too. Mine has slipped out at the moment, I'll need to replace it.

MR: Exactly. Great. I think I've actually done some work. I can show you what I've done. You mentioned the Pentel brush pen. I was playing with this. This is in a train ride in Minneapolis along the river with my kids. Then I think I was standing at the back in the caboose and just captured the tracks rolling away from us. I gotta say, it was really fun. I was really enjoying it. I need to do more of it this summer, so thank you again.

MC-M: Oh, that's wonderful. You're welcome. That brush pen is so big and bold that you can capture the shapes quickly and then the watercolor can bring it to life. I think that's something a artist friend of mine told me once was that big tools make for big ideas. That sometimes bumping up the size of your tool, you can fill something up quickly and just—

MR: Loosens you up a little bit too. I think. Talking about the size, if you know what the size of a pocket Moleskine is, which I don't know what the exact size is. The kit is not much bigger. Well, maybe I'll take a picture for the show notes. It's big enough to hold it and then the tools. It's actually pretty small, all things considered. Pretty compact, and you could throw that in a bag really easily. I appreciate little things from when I was a kid as well, so I super appreciated how you packed so much in this little tiny package. It fit me. It suited me.

MC-M: Oh, I'm so glad. Mine tends to get a little bloated, but the zipper holds, so I'm like, "Oh, I can just stuff one more thing in here."

MR: One more thing, just one more thing. That's excellent. Now, typically with Sketch noters, they often will use iPads and pencils and stuff. Are you using any kind of digital tools for the work you do? And what are they if you do?

MC-M: I'd say the biggest tool I use is my phone in just taking reference photos. I might be out somewhere and I find like being onsite and doing some sketching sort of activates my attention. It gets me into just active observation, paying attention. It doesn't matter if that's just color studies or notes, but just something to pay attention and get outta my head.

But then having some sort of media, additional media, let's say I'm going and need to add more color later or wanna work on some larger paintings, having a camera with me is really helpful. I think a phone is—I just have a little iPhone mini that—I'm not always looking for the best photo, but just for the reference and the memory.

Sometimes I'll even do little videos, especially if it's of birds or things that move so that I can get a sense of that motion. I can pause and maybe catch a different position. I will say, I'm curious about playing more with Procreate tools and other things. I had on my residency this summer, another artist was doing a lot of really cool development of his photos into digital images and it was good to see the potential there. But I'm a fairly analog person by nature.

MR: I can imagine. The problem that I've had in the field is just when you need a thing, the battery's dead. And if you're cold weather, it's dropping faster and if it's bright and sunny, it's hard to see. There's all these considerations that paper doesn't have those issues a lot of times. I could certainly see why that might be the case.

But well, that's a really great little toolkit and we'll, we'll have you send a link to all those things. We can put that in the show notes, so we've got links to all the stuff that you showed, or maybe the package of things that have them all in there. Maybe there's just one link and everything is already in there for someone so they can just buy it and they're ready to go. So cool.

Well, now let's shift again. We're shifting away from tools, and this is the tips portion of the interview where I frame it that there's someone listening, a visual thinker, whatever that means to them. Maybe they feel like they've been in a bit of a rut or they're on a plateau and they just need a little encouragement or some inspiration. What would be three things that you would tell them they can be inspirational, can be practical, three things that they might do to help them just kind of shake it up a little bit?

MC-M: I love that question because I'm a real process person and I already told you one of my mantras, which is practice not perfection. Another one of my mantras is trust in process. No matter how much painting I've done, I still sometimes look at a sketchbook or start a painting and I'm like, where do I begin? And I need to remember kind of, warm up again.

I love having my little process to get started. One thing I love in just all parts of my life, I love timers. I am so hooked on, like, does this feel hard to do? Set a timer. In workshops with people of all ages, I love going through gesture sketches, which are really fast, energetic little sketches to get the big idea of something.

Using a timer, we'll so often, start with a ten-second sketch, go to a 30-second sketch, a minute, and even up to two minutes. It's fascinating to see what can be done in just a couple of minutes. let's see if I have a little example here of some gestures. Here's some little, just tiny walrus gestures done with one project.

MR: Oh yeah.

MC-M: I'd recommend as one tip is, if you're feeling like you need a little prompt to get started is set yourself a timer. I'm gonna do this for three minutes, just to get yourself to sit down and get started. Another way to think about it that a scientist shared with me is the activation energy to get a chemical reaction started is bigger often than like continuing a process.

I think that timer can help us have that boost to get going. then once we are in the groove, it can be easier to stay in the flow. My first tip, Mike, is use a timer and set yourself a very small amount of time to do something. Now there's the question of what to do. And that will be my next tip.

Another tip I would suggest is if you're sitting somewhere and feeling like, "I need a little boost for getting going here." Would be just to play with painting the colors you see and not worry about composition. You might do this as little circles. An artist friend of ours with Art Toolkit lately has just been doing some really delightful little circle studies, in this vein of creating a little bit of a little wet circle on your paper, dropping a little bit of one color in, and adding a little bit of another color.

This could be more formal or you can see this little slouch of color on the other side of just seeing how colors might mix together what you see in front of you. But take away the pressure of I have to like, paint something or, or do something more, I'm gonna put this in quotes, "Official" or "Real feeling." Just give yourself the opportunity to play with color, what you see, and don't worry about composition.

Actually, there's a fun thing which I think we put on our website. I can send you a link to this, Mike. If you do this of just mixing the colors you see, sometimes you can go on top and just do a light pen drawing on top of that as well. I can send you a link to a little prompt of that.

MR: Okay.

MC-M: My last tip would be going the other direction from just looking at color to just starting with words. I think a lot about sense of place and palette of place is something, as an artist I pay attention to. you're building a vocabulary when you're outside of the colors you see of the environment of the stories you learn. if it feels too much to start with the drawing side of things, let yourself do some writing.

I often think about, you know, the W's of who, what, where, when, why when I write. I think it can be really fun to play, this is something you do so well. you might play with your writing. This is a little exercise I did on one program where we were imagining the ocean. So let your words be fun where you might play with how you're writing.

Then around those writings you might then add in little tiny thumbnail sketches or little icons and then be able to add some color to the page. with all of these tips, out of those three, it's about just simplifying your approach. setting a timer, putting a little limit on kind of your time and expectations, taking away composition, just focusing on color, and then just paying attention to the world and just letting yourself start with notes just to start that attention.

MR: Those are great. Those are three great tips. I almost wanna say practice not perfection and trust in the process are almost like free extra tips. I dunno. 0.1 and 0.2, I dunno, whatever. They are also good things to remember. That's really great. Well, here we are at the end of the interview. Crazy enough, it just flows by, it seems like every time I do these.

Tell us what's the best way to reach you to get to Art Toolkit to follow you. Are there social media channels where you're more active? What are the best ways to connect and explore what you're doing and what you're offering?

MC-M: Art Toolkit, we're at art toolkit.com and Mike, I'll put together a little discount code that you can share with your listeners at the end. We'll put in the show notes. We have an active Art Toolkit, Instagram. Fun community there. And I've got a small team Art Toolkit who helped me with that, which is great 'cause we really enjoy featuring other artists featuring techniques.

We have an Art Toolkit recommend series where we just really try and share inspiration and cool stuff to try and help inspire each other. My personal art is [e-mail]. I'm a little quieter on the social media front these days personally, but really with the Art Toolkit newsletter is the best place to hear about what is coming up. We announce to our newsletter our new releases or special offers first. We really enjoy that community and so invite you to sign up for that on our website.

MR: Great. Those are all great entry points. Everybody listening, definitely check out the code that'll be in the show notes, and then go visit and spend some money over here. We wanna encourage and support Maria and her team for the hard work they're doing and the sharing that you're doing, and you end up with good tools. Everybody wins in that case.

Thanks so much, Maria, for being on the show and sharing your experience and it's so good to have you on the show. Thanks so much.

MC-M: Oh, such a pleasure. Mike, thanks for everything you do and your work has long been inspiring for me too. Just really glad to share this community, so thank you.

MR: You're so welcome. Thanks so much. For those who are listening, this is another episode of the "Sketchnote Army Podcast." Until the next episode, we'll talk to you soon.