I talk with Maria about how she turned necessity into invention, creating her first pocket watercolor palette, the Art Toolkit.
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When I first met Maria Coryell-Martin, I was struck by her adventurous spirit; she’s an expeditionary artist who has sketched walruses in Greenland, penguins in Antarctica, and built a business that now reaches creatives worldwide.
In this episode of Creatives on Camera, I talk with Maria about how she turned necessity into invention, creating her first pocket watercolor palette while crawling through the sand to sketch wildlife, and how that small idea grew into Art Toolkit, a thriving business with e-commerce, a retail shop, online courses, and a global creative community. Maria shares what it really looks like to build a business step by step: starting with simple tools like Zoom and Shopify, adding layers only when needed, and focusing on practice over perfection. We also talk about using video to connect and build trust, the power of persistence, and why she believes art is a tool, not a talent. If you’ve ever felt like you don’t have the perfect tech, the perfect setup, or enough time to get started, this conversation will remind you that starting small is enough. You can grow from there.
Maria’s journey from expeditionary art to founding Art Toolkit
How sketching walruses inspired the first pocket palette
Building a business with multiple income streams (products, retail, courses, community)
Why “art is a tool, not a talent” matters for both creativity and teaching
Starting with minimal tech and scaling systems gradually
How video demos and livestreams built trust and audience loyalty
Practice over perfection: growing a business step by step
The importance of persistence and learning from challenges
Using platforms like Shopify, Circle, Vimeo, and YouTube strategically
Shopify - No.1 E-commerce Platform for All Businesses
Circle - The complete community platform
Vimeo - AI-Powered Video Platform
Camo Studio - Great video made easy
DaVinci Resolve - Professional Video Editing
Maria Coryell-Martin is an expeditionary artist and founder of Art Toolkit following the tradition of traveling artists as naturalists and educators. Her travels have brought her face-to-face with polar bears, leopard seals, emperor penguins, and narwhals.
Art Toolkit - Watercolor & Sketching Toolkits, use code "CREATIVES15" for 15% off!
Expeditionary Art by Maria Coryell-Martin
Upcoming Art Toolkit events
Art Toolkit Fall Workshop Series
Lyric Kinard (00:06.616) What does it really take to build a creative business that's both sustainable and expansive without burning out or relying on just one stream of income? I'm Lyric Kinard and this is Creatives on Camera, the podcast for makers, artists, and educators building bold, meaningful businesses using video. Whether you're just getting started or scaling something bigger, you're in the right place. In this episode, I'm talking with expeditionary artist Maria Coryell-Martin, founder of Art Toolkit, what started with a practical watercolor kit designed for crawling through the sand to sketch walruses turned into a thriving business built on many layers, e-commerce, a brick and mortar shop, livestream tutorials, workshops, and now online courses and community. Maria uses video not just to teach, but to connect, inspire, and expand her reach far beyond her Pacific Northwest location. We talk about how she scaled intentionally the platforms that support her work, including Circle and Shopify and what it looks like to build a creative business that supports both your art and your life. If you're a designer, shop owner, maker, teacher, or an artist trying to build something with depth and longevity, this episode will spark a lot of ideas. Let's get into it. Lyric Kinard (00:01.602) Hello Maria, it is so good to see you. I'm so grateful that you're here with us. Why don't you say hello to our audience and give us the beginning of your journey as an artist. Maria (00:14.88) well, thank you Lyric. I'm so happy to be here with you. my journey as an artist began, I mean, from being a real little kid and just loving to draw and paint and having it be how I expressed myself and explored the world. And that's been a common thread for me as I've developed my work over the years is this idea of art as a tool. And for me, it began as a tool for self-expression, a tool for learning. And my family traveled quite a bit when I was young, a seven-month stint in Tokyo, Japan. And there I discovered art as a tool for bridging language barriers and connection and would draw with people, express myself, and also had a brushmaker friend in Tokyo, a traditional paint brushmaker up the street, and would go up there several times a week with my mom and we'd just sit and paint. And he'd help teach me brush strokes and gave me dozens of brushes. And before I left, actually, his wife cut off my ponytail and made a paintbrush out of my own hair as a coming-of-age gift. he said was tradition in Japan. So it really began early on for me knowing the centrality of art to my identity. Lyric Kinard (01:21.678) That sounds like such an adventure and so much fun. Do you have formal art training then? Maria (01:27.898) Yeah, so I continued to paint through high school, but also was always very interested in science. And as a high schooler, I had an opportunity to spend a summer on the Juneau Icefield in southeast Alaska called the Juneau Icefield Research Program. And I returned in college as an artist in residence. But that was an eight week program to study glaciology, glacier mountaineering. and just this real like expedition experience and my father's a scientist who also studied the formation of sea ice. I grew up curious about ice from a young age and that had a big impact on me in thinking about how we can approach a subject such as a landscape through multiple perspectives, through the eyes of a scientist, through the eyes of an artist, through the eyes of Mount Nearing Safety where you can relate to say a glacier and a crevasse and maybe see and appreciate the atmosphere you're in colors, the safety of navigating it, and then how it's formed. Lyric Kinard (02:24.749) The world is so much richer from so many different viewpoints, right? When you're able to see outside of just the one small vision that we have, so bringing in different modalities and ways of understanding the world around us just is so amazing. that bringing visual language, bringing art into it is a whole other layer of beauty, isn't it? Maria (02:52.952) absolutely, couldn't agree more and when in college, came up with the idea of expeditionary art. After my second summer on the Juneau Icefield, and while in college at Northfield, Minnesota, I went to Carleton College. I did a number of study abroads. It was very cold in Minnesota in the winter, and so I had opportunities to travel during our winter trimester. So I did one season in the South Pacific studying printmaking and drawing, and another in Mali, West Africa, studying French and culture. Maria (03:25.53) which was really fun and I had the amazing opportunity of a fellowship called the Watson Fellowship after graduating, which is available to students from 50 colleges to be nominated. And Thomas J. Watson founded IBM and the fellowship is just to follow a dream. And so you propose a project and my project was to explore remote regions through art to look at how different landscapes impacted my art and artists I met. And so I painted around the world for a year and came home from that experience really fired up to continue expeditionary art in particular collaborating with scientists to help tell their stories through art and Art Toolkit grew out of that. Every time I go in the field think about hey what supplies am I going to bring how do I make this easy and again it all comes back to that idea of art as a tool versus a talent this tool to you know whether it's self-expression to exploration cultivating scientific inquiry meditation you know connection with others. Lyric Kinard (04:21.908) understanding. Maria (04:24.996) I feel really fortunate to continue this passion for so many years. Lyric Kinard (04:28.471) So tell us about what Art Toolkit is. So you became an artist, you were understanding the world through this different way, and how not everybody leaps from that or naturally slides from that into a business person. You saw a need and you filled it, and how did, like, did you have any business background? How did you decide that, I want to do this on a bigger scale to bring it to other people. Maria (05:01.616) Yeah, so when I came back from my year of travel and in college I'd had a, you one class. was a studio art major with a concentration in French and then sort of took as many other interesting classes as I could, you know, with the liberal arts college. But I'd taken one class around sort of, you know, art as entrepreneur and I had the good fortune of having some really low rent living situations for a few years, which made a big difference because I didn't have to earn a lot of money. Lyric Kinard (05:28.225) That is huge. Maria (05:29.456) And so I came back and started exploring some of the different business models of how to be an artist and made a point of reaching out to different people I admired. some I knew, some I'd seen their work and was just really in awe. And think one of my mottos is don't be afraid to ask for what you want. And you just got to reach out and talk to people. A good lesson, too, from traveling alone for over a year. Lyric Kinard (05:55.381) absolutely. Absolutely. I learned that exact lesson from traveling as well, because I knew enough of the language to get myself out of trouble, but not quite enough to keep myself from getting into trouble. But people, once you ask them, they're so helpful. I think people in general want to reach out and connect with each other. So don't be afraid to try. Maria (06:17.966) Absolutely. Yeah. And so I explored different models for being an artist and met people doing art fairs as sort of their full time work or doing full time university teaching or doing sort of side teaching and then their art. full-time gallery exhibitions. There's an artist who I quite admire and had the opportunity to meet named Tony Foster who creates these massive large-scale watercolor journals. And I went to a show of his in, oh where was it, Sun Valley, Idaho. And he's got these like six foot wide watercolors selling for $50,000. I mean just like a whole other scale. I have not yet reached. Yeah, quite large. Lyric Kinard (07:00.726) Right, that's pretty large for watercolor. Where do you find watercolor sheets that big? Right? Maria (07:10.42) And so I made a decision early on that I didn't want to rely on my paintings for my income. And so I started exploring how to cultivate different income streams. And so I tried a lot of things early on of doing a little bit of teaching and a little bit of gallery shows I showed regularly and a little bit of know, contract design work and just every little thing and reaching out to people and meanwhile having artist residencies and expeditions. And our toolkit was sparked by an idea when I was on an expedition in Greenland on the northeast coast of Greenland I was working with a walrus biologist. on a trip so I went up there to paint with him and really marvelous environment we were in a based out of a little place called Dana Borg which is the base of operations for this serious dog patrol that goes up and patrols via sled dog the whole Greenland National Park and so we would take this boat down the fjord to this little sandy island literally called Sand Island and this was the spot where the But walruses would like to haul out of the water and they pile up on each other and just chill out. They'd molt in the summer so they'd be shedding their fur. And they'd be very full because they would have been foraging for clams, their favorite food, sucking them up like little vacuum cleaners underwater. And we were sneaking up on walruses a bunch to observe them. And I was sketching them and doing audio recordings and taking pictures. And I found on this trip to sneak up on walruses in a sandy, cold environment, we'd be wearing all of our warm clothes and then we'd put on these little machinist suits. You imagine like a one side, you know, little jump Maria (09:08.318) that you step into and zip yourself up. And then we would start walking up to the walruses and then we would get down on our knees. Walruses are pinnipeds like seals and other animals and they're scared of vertical figures. And so we'd get down lower and lower and soon we'd be commando crawling in the sand. And so you have to imagine all this equipment I had with me and my watercolor palette at that time was separate from my kit. Watercolor palette and my sketchbook and my camera and my audio recorder. And it was just really awkward because, you know, I had sort of stuff tucked away down my little suit. But to manage it, Maria (09:41.295) it all was awkward. And so I came home from that trip really wanting to have sort of my zip cover sketch kit with a watercolor palette that fit inside. And that's really what kicked this off and thinking, okay, what does that look like and how can I make it? And that's where our pocket palette came from. That's part of the art toolkit suite of products and then the Art toolkit. And I started selling it on my website probably in 2011, I think. I can still find the old blog post on my website. Lyric Kinard (09:42.754) Right. Lyric Kinard (10:09.506) Describe what it is. Maria (10:11.418) So our toolkit is, it's gone through different iterations, but we have them in two sizes. And they're these zip, Cordura zip covers. And then inside you can slip in all your tools, sketchbook, pens, brushes. And then we make these very slim watercolor palettes. I'm gonna open one up here. and we designed them in three sizes. so since they're so slim, they really can fit into sketchbooks or be rubber banded to them. they're also, we have this magnetic base on our palettes and pans that are stainless steel and are available in a number of different sizes. And so people can mix and match all the layouts of their palette to truly something custom. And some years ago, before we even had, maybe about five years ago, all of our pan sizes, I posed a question on my blog of how many arrangements or permutations were possible. And I was at Thanksgiving with my family and trying to like count them out and we only had two sizes of palettes at that point. And I sort of thought, thousands? Meanwhile, two people in the comments had written little computer programs to help figure it out. And on our medium-sized palette with the pan sizes we had available, many guesses of how many permutations lyric are possible. Lyric Kinard (11:35.214) Thousands and thousands and thousands. I love that the artist got so geeky. Maria (11:38.11) keep going higher millions 40 million over 40 million permutations our little one only had like 1200 so we have this teeny tiny one but for our medium-sized 40 million and so truly there's these endless possibilities of how to customize your tools and yeah I started selling them on my website Lyric Kinard (11:55.289) Just the thought that somebody wrote a program for that, this is probably before AI could write programs for you, right? That artists come, creatives come in so many different varieties. We all do all different kinds of things, but geeking out about our tools is one of our favorites, right? Right, so it's like an indestructible trapper keeper for artists that's Maria (12:03.161) Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. I was delighted yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's one reason I love scientists too. Lyric Kinard (12:24.27) perfect for holding all the things that you have to have with you. Maria (12:28.805) And it's truly field tested. mean, that's one thing is I've always really stood behind our tools and whatever we offer. You know, I personally try to use test and, you know, we'll take them to some rugged places and have a lot of, a lot of intention. And I think this all stems from, you know, when I started Art Toolkit and thinking about not only, you know, do I enjoy doing my art, but there's just the real delight in getting to share it with other people and wanting to empower and inspire them to go out in the world and coming back to that idea of art as a tool versus as a talent. You don't need to be good at art to go and enjoy the headspace or enjoy the connection you get with other people or sharing it with your grandkids or whatever it is of just having that delight. And the words of my first grade teacher often come to my head. She was this peace activist and marvelous woman named Aki Kurose. They named a school in Seattle after her actually. interned in Japanese internment camps as a youth and could have become really bitter and unhappy and instead she became passionate about peace and education and science and would always say a creative person is never bored and I also think a creative person is never boring. Lyric Kinard (13:38.872) Absolutely. And so many people, like I work with in the design courses I teach, so many people who are afraid that they're not creative or afraid that they're not artistic, right? And they, we in our culture often fail to understand and fail to teach each other that it's everybody is creative in a different way and that the ways we express that can be learned. Lyric Kinard (14:08.217) can be practiced, can be taught. It's not like you were saying, it's not talent. It's learning and growing and working at this. Lots of practice. And you gotta be willing to be bad at something before you can get good in order to get good, right? Absolutely. Maria (14:23.726) And you can still enjoy it if the results are, you might think, this isn't quite as satisfying, but I just really focus on process. And I always remind myself, practice not perfection and trust in process. Lyric Kinard (14:35.951) And that holds true for business people and for building businesses as well. So you had a product, how did it evolve from there? So looking at your business now, you have a brick and mortar shop, you have online courses, you have a membership, you still do expeditions and trips that... Lyric Kinard (15:03.785) man, do I want to go on one of those. They look like so much fun. So I would love to hear how this evolved from where you started with a product that came out of a need, developing it into something that you could offer to other people. How did your business evolve? Maria (15:26.14) Through a lot of persistence lyric. I think persistence is a trait. And you know when I think about 2011 to now 2025. Lyric Kinard (15:29.231) It didn't just happen overnight! Maria (15:39.151) It's been a real journey. But early on I had one of my buddies from high school as a mentor who also entrepreneur founded a company now called Dakota Lithium. His name is Mike Shope, Michael Shope. And early on he said, you know, it'd be fun to have a little something to work on and just to have like stuff envelopes, like, you know, something, something on the side. And so he offered to help with some of the assembly of my early pallets. And so Michael gave me some really terrific advice on some of just the financial organization and tracking you know expenses and profit and and then I do have the the real good fortune of my husband being a web developer and so he and I have always worked very closely often in the same office Maria (16:28.208) and same room where my eyes are on all of his design and all of his eyes were on my paintings and website. And so he was able to help build me a website. And now there's a lot more tools available, I think, with web templates that I think are terrific for folks to get started. But that was a real boost. And just trying to keep financials in order. I think reaching out to mentors, had some friends, still have friends, mentors of mine who used to run a clothing company and they just said, you know, even if you're small, just set up that groundwork. Get your financials in order. You know, I got that business, my business license really early on after I came home, I think right in 2006 for my sole proprietorship and took myself seriously. Even though I wasn't yet making a lot of money, but something else I immediately did was the first presentation I did coming back from my big trip around the world was I started collecting emails. Maria (17:27.902) And so my email list was always one of my most valuable resources and I would religiously email people once a month. And it gave me a deadline to have some projects to talk about, things to share on my blog, and help me build up a base of supporters. So always having my mailing list sign out, having it on my website, and it slowly grew from the very beginning, 50 to 100, to now just thousands with Art Toolkit. Maria (17:57.775) And I think what was really interesting is I had a kiddo 10 years ago and Art Toolkit by the time I had a kid, you know we started this, we sort of thought, maybe Art Toolkit can help pay for groceries, know a couple hundred dollars a week would be amazing. And then, maybe it could help pay for rent, like that would be great. And then, you know, maybe it could pay for everything. But by the time I was pregnant, it was just like a little part-time job. Maria (18:23.9) which was perfect because I could assemble things and at that point I was doing all the assembly and shipping fulfillment. And you know, I could have my kiddo and just kind of do it in my free time. Not really, not much free time, but in the, you fit it in. Exactly, exactly. And I had a lot of fun on all the design stuff for the kits and I really enjoy that kind of tinkering. know, I'm, and then, I think the big lesson for me was getting injured. it's really hard. I think having a baby is really hard on your body and, Lyric Kinard (18:40.271) You fit it in between all the little bits, yes. Maria (19:05.054) was hard on my back really carrying this little kid a lot and when my kiddo was two I bent over to open a folding table and my back just like seized up you know just immediately on the floor and I just thought I can't do this by myself anymore I just physically can't. And so I started thinking about how to get help and I took a really big leap in hiring a business coach. One of my business friends who also ran a little design company Maria (19:35.174) had a coach and was talking about the impact and that was a big turning point for me was getting a coach and helping get some of the roadmap of how to get help and how to develop this into something bigger where I wasn't having to kind of reinvent the wheel all the time and and do it alone and trying to muddle my way through it. Lyric Kinard (19:55.994) Right. How did that, so that is a huge leap and kind of scary because when your business is not large and you're not bringing in a lot of income, it's expensive to hire a coach or somebody to do that. So it's a huge leap of faith in yourself and an investment in your business to bring in somebody to guide you through it. But. Lyric Kinard (20:25.623) I have never heard of anybody who it didn't really pay off, right? Maria (20:30.768) I think you need to find the right fit though. I definitely talked to several coaches and had, you know, bought a little package of three calls with one person who my friend had worked with and she was great, but didn't quite click. And another person I worked with a little bit and the woman who clicked I'm still working with and she has really terrific systems for accountability and follow through and leadership courses that we run our team through and has had a huge impact on just how we run this Maria (21:00.732) whole company and my mother-in-law was my first hire to do my shipping and so you have to imagine this little business kind of fit in a cupboard now you know we've got a warehouse downtown shop and we could take it places so the first time I trained her on shipping we drove halfway across the state to this beautiful place called the Meadow Valley and we were out there for the winter for a week little family vacation and trained her up in shipping and and then I started Maria (21:30.634) hiring some folks to come over and assemble things in my laundry room. And I was starting out with just contract hires and then realized quickly I needed to become a S Corp, so incorporated, which was a project, not a huge project, but I'm learning. Lyric Kinard (21:47.009) It is. It's a level up in your business, for sure. Maria (21:49.922) It is, yeah, yeah. And then as we grew and started to overflow the house, my mother-in-law took for a year sort of all the shipping and raw materials and let us store those in her spare bedroom. And that was a real big help because we didn't have to pay rent yet. And then the first spot we rented, we stayed there for four years until we outgrew it and they wanted to convert it into an apartment. Lyric Kinard (22:14.916) And it was just a warehouse at this point, a shipping center. Maria (22:17.147) Yeah, the first place we rented was this adorable former frame shop and artist studio with this great big curved window and wood and we set up a little retail showroom in half of it. Maria (22:34.603) Right as we moved in, was right before the COVID lockdown started. So that was, I think we moved in in like January. So that would took a little bit of navigating. We didn't open our showroom for at least a couple of years. Maria (22:48.667) But yeah having the space and then we started to expand the team and also started to tease apart my work as an artist which is expeditionary art and art toolkit because they all started under the same umbrella and so to separate the two and I still feel like we're finding little things to untangle and now I'm hoping to put more energy into my expeditionary art now that our toolkit as we develop leaders in the company is to become a little more sustainable on its own. Lyric Kinard (23:19.394) Excellent. How did that? So tell me that's a beautiful picture of the progression and of the work it takes to build over time something that works for you and works for your business. How did how did you end? I want to hear the online progression now. Like you now you have. Lyric Kinard (23:46.641) these beautiful offerings that are available to a global audience outside of just this small little place where you live or the few people that you can take in person on an expedition. So how did that part of the business evolve? Maria (24:01.314) That's a great question. So the business, having a website early on meant I was able to be selling my paintings, greeting cards, prints and we had just real basic Shopify buttons just to sell and so people right away could purchase kits and you know this started out as an e-commerce business predominantly. Maria (24:36.056) In part, it started to grow just through word of mouth and some of my connections too of reaching out or offering to send things out. I remember I sent a palette to James Gurney who I love his work. I grew up reading his Dinotopia books and... Lyric Kinard (24:46.96) my goodness, exactly. Our house fans so hard over James Gurney. Maria (24:54.418) yeah, and he put together a blog post about like travel watercolor palettes and included like my palette and then like a Winsor and Newton palette and it was just like James Green! I was so excited. I still am excited. I truly, he's a master. And you know that gave me a boost. Lyric Kinard (25:02.993) no way. Lyric Kinard (25:09.018) He is a generous artist. He is such a generous teacher. If any of you want to learn so much, look at his books, look at his blogs. He's a fangirl. I'm fangirling over James Kearney. Yes. he's terrific. And I mean, that's something too is as a business is wanting to lead with generosity, lead with education and community. We give away a lot of free content because we want to inspire and empower folks. Maria (27:47.94) from the start though, we use Shopify for managing back end and orders and it's been really brilliant and we continue to use Shopify. Lyric Kinard (27:58.841) Yeah, it's a easy, really well built e-commerce platform. So if you have merchandise, it's easy, it's very cost effective, great for inventory, shipping, all that kind of things. Now, if you're building online course platforms, pretty much none of the online course platforms that are built for that do shipping well. do physical goods well, but there are ways around it. So tell me, tell me again, let's get through, you've been on Shopify, how did you expand? When did you start offering online courses? When did you start building the community online as well as in person? Maria (28:47.548) So I've been teaching workshops, you know, starting from when I had first returned from my travels. And I had a lot of practice being in front of people and being exuberant from, I'd say starting as like a camp counselor and my high school had a lot of outdoor education and so different sort of leadership scenarios, which I think helped me be really comfortable in front of people. And then a lot of public speaking practice from giving presentations about my expeditions and that translates really well to teaching. Maria (29:19.774) of just being confident in front of people or not being afraid to be a little silly and have some fun with it. So yeah, so I did a lot of teaching and as I was doing some of those early explorations of different models for success from adults to nature journaling programs for kids, visiting schools, and I'd known that I should explore online teaching and it was really the pandemic. Maria (29:49.866) that kicked us into it and I'm just sure this is the same story for so many folks. And it started for us with just hopping on and my friend had invited me to do an Instagram live and said, on, we'll just come on and paint. And I sort of thought, that wasn't so scary. And started to get some of the tools of, know, and we'd done a lot of video work anyways, so I already had some tools in terms of, you know, cameras and I mean, now you don't need, Maria (30:19.549) really just use an iPhone too. They've gotten much more simple. And up until about two years ago, we were doing pretty rudimentary in terms of having a product in Shopify that we were selling. And then we were just pretty much manually handling the roster and emailing folks and then hosting them on Zoom. And we were just doing one offs. So we weren't offering on demand. Lyric Kinard (30:21.361) We realized we really wanted to automate more because just human error happens and the number of folks we were starting to get. And so we looked into different platforms and the one we landed on was Circle that felt really versatile in how you can set it up clean. We wanted something that felt easy to navigate and bright. We didn't want to be on Facebook with our community. We initially had a little Facebook community. We wanted something more neutral territory. it's, you know, nothing's perfect, but for us it's worked well and now we're able to set up courses on it that we do the live option and then we've been offering recorded access. And the recordings are pretty new to us. We've only been doing it for about six months. So now we have, is that true? When did we start? Maybe September last year, maybe nine months. Maria (31:50.458) But now we have about 10 courses we're offering. And so in the beginning, I did a lot of the teaching because I'm always the guinea pig. And now we host other artists coming in. And it's been a fun way to share expertise of other folks, support our brand, and build our community. And I've had really good feedback from folks about it all. Lyric Kinard (32:10.149) Right, and it's not a huge leap of a progression. You have a product, you're used to being online. Did you have tutorial videos? You said you always shared a lot. A lot. Maria (32:22.043) yep. Yeah, we do a lot of little demos. And then we also started doing, during the pandemic, weekly live demos. Now we do them about once a month that we take the summer off. Lyric Kinard (32:32.124) Where did you do those demos? Where could people find them? Maria (32:36.535) Yeah, we do host them live on YouTube so folks can watch at a link. We do the recording and then we do a blog post on our website. Whenever possible we try to direct people to our website instead of another platform. But they're, you know, they usually tie into skills and tools and so we get, you know, tools that we offer to help educate folks. Maria (33:01.805) but then also that inspiration. And we also really enjoy doing a progression with artists we work with from starting with a feature where we feature them on our socials and our newsletter and can get to know them. We offer to send them some products often if they're not already using them. And then if that goes well, if they're good communicators and professional, we can invite them to a live demo. And a live demo is an opportunity to see how people Maria (33:29.819) sort of teaching communicate online you know quality of their setup and their confidence and live streamed on youtube and then if that goes well Lyric Kinard (33:35.804) and it's live streamed on YouTube? YouTube is such, YouTube people, YouTube is such a good way to pull in an audience and find a large crowd. If you have good SEO, they find you and didn't know you before, but I love what you said that you're always pulling people to your website or your email list, which you said is your most valuable asset. Maria (33:58.032) Yeah, yeah. And I'd say YouTube, we have a lot of learning to do there. We don't have a ton of followers right now. I'd say seven or eight thousand. But we haven't put a lot of effort into it beyond we just go and host our videos there. Our workshop videos we host on Vimeo, which is a little higher quality for syncing up with Circle. But yeah, coming back to this progression, if we have a good relationship with an artist through being a feature and then a live demo, then we've already introduced our audience to them. Maria (34:30.141) that they'll communicate well with us, we have a relationship, and then we can invite them to be an instructor if it feels like a good fit both ways. And that sort of is a bigger time investment all around for us. Lyric Kinard (34:43.537) All right, and so once when you offer a class, it's live via Zoom. Maria (34:50.019) Yep, yep, so we do a live option and then people can also, yep, and then I've been using a tool called Camo Studio, which is, I think it's terrific. And so we have the artist get set up with Camo Studio, we, whenever possible, are trying to get a 4K recording. And then I edit the videos and audio to just try and strengthen the quality, so it's not just, you know, the Zoom recording, but a little higher quality for the... Lyric Kinard (34:52.399) and then you just record it. Lyric Kinard (34:58.651) Yes. Maria (35:18.661) folks who watch later. Lyric Kinard (35:20.207) Nice. So I don't think I've used camo for remote two people in two different places. So it's making my brain have so many ideas. So the same, yeah. Maria (35:32.549) Yeah, mean, it's a technical, like, you know, we have to walk folks through the technical component and remember that to get the recording, for the most part, it's worked. And then, you know, they end up with a 20 gig file or whatnot that then they can upload to our Dropbox. And then we got a nice big file. And in Zoom, we always do the recording with all the audio on separate tracks. So that helped us still that. And there's probably better ways to do it, to be honest, Lyric, but we we're doing our best. Maria (36:02.492) that's working. Lyric Kinard (36:03.909) When I work with people with tech, I tell them whatever you have now that works, stick with it. Absolutely stick with it, make it work until it absolutely doesn't, right? Until you hit a wall where you know you need something that it can't do, but 98 % of the time what you've already got going works just fine. So don't waste the time and effort on. Lyric Kinard (36:33.059) a new steep learning curve. So, so far you've got YouTube going to your website and then Zoom courses recorded and what do you use for editing? What program do you use for video editing? Which is a fantastic open source, really, really professional kind of program. Well done. Also a little bit of a learning curve. So if you're brand new, if you're ambitious, Maria (36:45.884) We used DaVinci Resolve. Maria (36:55.246) Yeah, yeah, I really like it. Little bit of a learning curve. Do some tutorials. Yep, yep. We obsessively document in our business, so we are able to try and train some folks. I'd like to get off of doing the primary editing. That's been on my plate mostly, but DaVinci Resolve's a great program. Lyric Kinard (37:12.817) It is very good. And then the recordings live on Circle or on how does that work? Maria (37:18.958) So Circle can host recordings, but we like to embed them. So we upload them to Vimeo. And I'm trying to remember why we did Vimeo versus YouTube. might just be what's... Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (37:30.651) Vimeo is more secure, it's password protective, you can put a paywall up around it, and better quality than YouTube. MAria Yeah, and we're not looking for that sort of community component of people getting to discover the videos. They're there and private except for students. Maria (37:51.836) Yeah, and we have each course. build a course and then there's sort of a live access sort of special area for folks who doing it live. And then we have an art toolkit community on Circle that's just everyone who's part of it. And we're not huge yet, I'd say. I feel like we might be up around 600 at this point, but it's only a year old and the people who are part of it are just lovely. And so we invite everyone who signs up for a course to be part of that. And then I've also taught twice now a six week watercolor course called Watercolor Fundamentals and for that I did, my goodness, I'd have to check on the stats of how many videos. I did a whole ton of pre-recorded videos. Each course had three about 10 minute, 10 to 20 minute tutorials each week and then I did a illustrated PDF for each week and then each week would also have a live video demo. And then we had a special sort of smaller community for that. And each week had a special area where people could post their work. So participants who sign up now can go back week by week and see the whole list of postings from all the students. And yeah, that was a ton of work, but also a lot of learning. And with that particular course, we had launched the course before I had finished recording all the content. So it really kept me on my toes. Yeah, because you want to see the demo. Lyric Kinard (39:10.758) course. Yeah, it's a I think it's a fantastic way to do things to it's also proof of concept if you launch a course and see if people sign up that means people want it right and then yes you have to get it done. Maria (39:25.901) you do have to get it done. was a little easier the second time around, but then I also wanted to freshen up some content, Lyric Kinard (39:35.889) Right? But then it lives there. And then you have the, love all the different modalities you have in one class. You have something live, you have something pre-recorded, you have the asynchronous community where they can get together. In one course you have videos and written instruction. People learn all of the different ways, right? So in online courses, in online learning, Lyric Kinard (40:04.826) All of them can be accommodated really effectively. And also I love that it gives you such a wide audience. You're up there in the beautiful Pacific Northwest and you can reach people from anywhere in the world. Maria (40:24.26) I mean that's the beauty of just being online and making friends all over and I think it's been so interesting for us as we have a brick and mortar now too to sort of flip the script from our usual know e-commerce and get to have some in-person communities so I'd say that's one of my next steps is you know we have a lot of folks in person and wanting to do more in-person events and sort have to build the new templates. Lyric Kinard (40:44.804) Mm-hmm. Yeah, you follow where your heart leads too, right? All of the parts of art business, of especially an education aspect to it, where you share not only the beautiful things you create, but you help other people create beautiful things too, to fill their own soul. Lyric Kinard (41:08.774) There's so many different parts of that and there's no, it feels very spiral, circular, spherical, right? There's no logical, you have to start here and progress this way. People come in from all different points and they all work together, right? You find that what you said earlier as we were talking about how you just tried a lot of things, that's. Lyric Kinard (41:34.68) of times that's what businesses do. We try a lot of things and see what feels right, see what works. Maria (41:41.754) Yeah, yeah, and as a business, I really appreciate having multiple income streams. we've got our retail, online, direct-to-consumer, wholesale, and workshops and events. I think that... You know, not putting all of your eggs in one basket can be wise and also keeps things interesting of getting to sort of focus your energy on one thing and then the next. And for the workshops, we put a lot of intention into them over the past year. And now we've got a model that feels like, okay, we've got some systems now how to do this and can kind of trust it and build it out and see what kind of responses. So right now with our instructors, we do in our agreement a year that will offer their courses. And then after we take them offline, we're going to continue offering the recording. People can still watch it for at least another year. So we're guaranteeing that our students get at least a year to engage with the material. But then we may also renew and we pay our instructors 50% of the proceeds because we appreciate all the work they do. Oh, actually is that true? Right now I be doing 40% on the live because of our work in the editing and the tech and the management. Lyric Kinard (42:55.058) And it is a lot. It is a lot. What is your video setup? Maria (43:01.275) Let's see, for videos we do, it depends what kind of recording we're doing. We have an R5 Canon camera we use for product shots and for our real professional shoots, like if we're doing video work and like a lot of our tutorials now are shot on that. Maria (43:22.213) For me, if I'm teaching, I'll usually, we have lighting. haven't, and we've got this new space and this new space, and then my kid just took over my home studio. And so all of my studio space right now is discombobulated. And maybe by the time this airs, I'll have things set up. Cause usually I've got two big overhead lights for consistent lighting over my desk. And then I'll often set up another big light. Maria (43:46.787) We use Rode, what are these? Rode Go mics maybe? I'm talking in one right now. Wireless Pro. And then I'll often just set up my iPhone if I'm teaching and use Camo Studio to record. And I really like the Manfrotto Magic Arms are like bomber. Maria (44:12.95) and they're a little expensive, but we use them. can hold a lot of weight, so we use them with our heavier cameras too. Lyric Kinard (44:19.106) I am writing it down to look them up because that is one that I haven't tried out yet. Lyric Kinard (44:33.594) And I love trying out new equipment, right? But if you have an arm to hold something, you can just pop in your phone, pop in whatever camera you've got, you know, and I'm sure this isn't how you started out. Maria (44:49.892) mean, starting out, even back on my blog, we play with building some various structures to use, you know, other cameras to do time lapse. I've used GoPros before just out in the field. And yeah, mean, but a phone can just do so much right now. And we do a lot of like reels and stuff for socials and just use phones for those and, you know, fun little stop action or time lapses. Lyric Kinard (45:15.942) Right, especially when you're beginning, the best possible camera to use is the one that's in your hand. The one that's accessible, that you don't have to get out and set up and fuss all kinds of things with. Do what's easy and then it will get done. Maria (45:31.642) Yeah, yeah. I that's what we say about our sketchbooks, right? The sketchbook you have with you. Trying to make it easy. Lyric Kinard (45:35.83) Absolutely, absolutely. That is so much fun. Where do you see yourself going from now? Maria (45:43.427) Yeah, that's a great question. We're really excited to build our community more and I think right now more than ever I just I keep coming back to the words you know community and creativity because there's a lot of challenges in the world and to feel connected to others and connected to ourselves I think is really grounding and to bring joy. And so I want to continue finding ways both in person and online to help connect people and offer opportunities around that. I'm curious about subscription models. We haven't done a lot of thinking yet about what that would look like for our business, but I know a lot of folks do various subscriptions, so that's something I'm curious about. But we have moved now, we just moved into this warehouse that we're still settling into and now we get to expand the retail shop. two moves in two years. And on top of that, my parents and my husband's parents moved last year too. So it's felt like a lot of upheaval. And so I'm excited to go deeper into everything. We've done a lot of sort of growth and to go deep and trying to get better at everything we've been exploring is something I'm excited about. Lyric Kinard (46:54.609) I'm excited for you too. really excited. Maria, where can people find you online? Maria (47:00.654) Yeah, so people can look for us at arttoolkit.com. That's all run together. If you want to see some of my art, my website is Expeditionary Art. That's like Expedition, A-R-Y, art.com. And yeah, and you can find us on socials at art toolkit and love to stay connected, love to see what folks are doing. I think we can learn so much from each other and it's part of the pleasure of getting to connect with people like you Lyric is I think in the creative world, the more we can uplift and inspire each other, the better because there's really room for everyone is something I believe. And so let's let's be there to support each other and have that community and creativity. Lyric Kinard (47:42.588) You're preaching my sermon. I agree with you 1000%. It is all about coming together and lifting each other and that makes the world such a better place. Maria, before we go, I love to ask people, what's the last thing you made? And it doesn't have to be a piece of art. I mean, just off the top of your head. Maria (48:02.682) right here. I think this was the most recent sketch I made. I was in Victoria last weekend, and so I did a little sketch of the Empress Hotel while I was sitting waiting to meet my family. Yeah, so just a quick little sketch. Lyric Kinard (48:16.465) I have stayed in that hotel. It's such a beautiful place. on video people, Maria is holding up a beautiful little watercolor sketch that she pulled right out of her art toolkit, because it was right there. So we will find as many links that we talked about as we can and put them in the show notes. And I encourage everybody to go check out Art Toolkit to be inspired by this lovely journey that Lyric Kinard (48:46.457) It hasn't been overnight. It's been long. It's growth in so many different areas with, you know, not always ease, but determination. And it's beautiful to see where it's grown to. And Maria, I can't wait to see where you go next. Thank you so much for spending time here. Maria (49:07.708) well, my pleasure, Lyric. I just thank you for what you're doing, and it was so much fun to get to meet you, you know, last year at this conference in Seattle, and look forward to keeping in touch. And hope anyone who has any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. Lyric Kinard (49:24.443) Yeah, you guys go look at arttoolkit.com. All right friends, go create, go do beautiful things, go be generous, go teach, go share what you know with the world and we'll see you next time on Creatives on Camera. Lyric Kinard My friends, Maria just shared some beautiful ideas for building a creative business that's diverse and sustainable, including her thoughtful use of video products, community and online teaching. If you're ready to try out her Art Toolkit, Maria has generously created a discount good through the end of 2025 just for Creatives on Camera listeners. You'll find the code and link up in this episode show notes. And if you want to dive deeper into business growth tools like platform comparisons, marketing resources, and community strategies, head over to theacademyforvirtualteaching.com. There you'll find a supportive community and video-making workshops designed specifically for creative educators. Thank you for listening. I hope today's conversation inspires you to build something that supports both your art and your livelihood on purpose and with intention and on your own terms. Until next time, creatives on camera, I'm Lyric Kinard. Go create, teach, and connect.
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