Trailbound Weekly EDITION | 002
This week’s header artwork 🎨 is brought to you by long-time Trailbound Community Member Tina Kramer. She shares her view of the Odessa Gorge in Rocky Mountain National Park. We love how she allowed her drawing to expand “beyond the page.”
Hi Friends!
Let us kick-off this edition with a THANK YOU to everyone who wrote in after last week’s communications hiccup that sent our weekly email directly in to $P@M 😫. The really cool part of that very stressful part of the week — inspired reconnecting with individual members of the Trailbound Community!
In the moment it felt like a giant sour lemon 🍋. By week’s end, it became a perfectly sweet cup of lemonade! Honestly, it would be wonderful if our community felt they could write in more frequently! hint hint
Your replies to last week highlighted a few things for us, too.
Weekly email communications from Trailbound are a BIG 👍🏼! Phew, because we really enjoy staying in touch outside of social media. Those won’t stop!
This new blog-style format is a winner! 🏆 Yup, we sort of wished we started with this format. Emails get deleted, archived and forgotten. Hopefully this format makes it easier to revisit content that supports your creative journey. We’ll be making better use of tags and if ever you need to “find” something, there is a “search” box in the footer of every page.
More “painting together” opportunities. 🎨 For that, we have a plan for the remainder of the year, see below under 📰 News & Updates 🎭.
What will YOU fill 🖍️ your blank page with?
Something else many of you wrote in about — how much you enjoyed our new header!
How you see the world brings us a lot of joy. We especially loved' young Silas’ sketch! So we thought, if it lights up our day-to-day, maybe it would light up our whole community’s week, too! So, we create this 1-page FREE Digital Download with the header line art for you to trace.
There are actually TWO options on this one sheet of paper:
One with a complete scene, like you saw in last week’s header artwork.
One with a blank page, as you see in this week’s artwork by Tina, who chose a personal scene to share.
How this works:
Download the provided PDF and either trace or free-hand the primary line art with or without the illustrated landscape.
Complete your sketch and email it to us by Sunday/Monday of any given week.
We are VERY hopeful you all flood our inbox with your sketches!
📰 News & Updates 🎭
SAVE THE DATE! This year’s 2025 Advent Watercolor Series is inspired by the wildlife we have in our backyards. Have you submitted your favorite animal from where you live? So far we have contributions from Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and the UK, We have A LOT of the planet yet to cover!
The Trailbound Community loves a good series and we are really excited about this year’s plan for the Advent Season.
However, we don’t really want to wait to make artwork together on the regular. This is what we are going to try and inspire for the next few months and we hope you might play along, too!
For the remainder of September:
We organize! This will look different for each of us. For me (Max), I’ve been wanting to give my Alaska Shedio a refresh. Change up how I have the space laid out. Mix up what’s hanging on the walls. Meanwhile, giving it a good deep clean, too. Oh, and the snacks need restocking! If you have a favorite studio snack, let me know on Discord under 🥨 Because Why Not! #studio-snacks
October (also known as Inktober among the artist community):
One ink-ONLY sketch a day. For the whole of October try to keep a tin of Trail Tiles or a small-ish sketchbook, etc. on your person. The challenge for the month is to take 5-10 minutes per day to sketch out something you will color in at a later date…
Trailbound Community artist Woolyrbain has an awesome travel set-up. We especially love her custom cut and filled black tin of paper. If you would like to build your own, or connect with others who have, and pick their brains — Trailbound Discord Thread #other-fun-stuff, #palettes and #travel-tips-hacks are great places to start.
November (Color-November):
Daily dose of color! For the whole of November we will 🖍️ COLOR IN the sketches from October! November is a wild month, kicking off the busy holiday season and meeting end-of-the-year deadlines, etc.. By creating little “coloring pages” in October, we’ll make it a little easier to sneak in 5-10 minutes a day to make art. 🎨 NOTE: You do NOT have to use watercolor paints. Maybe November is the month you explore GOUACHE or those really fancy COPIC markers.
How do we do this TOGETHER?
Virtually — We really encourage you to make the most out of our Trailbound Discord Community. There is the most lovely core group of real life humans who engage in that space in beautiful colorful fashion. It’s so neat to see how they welcome new members. For these proposed monthly activities let’s make use of the #community-artwork channel under “🖼️ Show & Tell.”
In-Person — Within the Discord Community we have a section called “🥾 Trail Bound” with channel #meet-ups. It is our DREAM to see images of Trailbound Community meeting up in real life (IRL). But, what a fun way to connect and paint it forward with friends and family in your personal circle! They don’t have to be directly connected to us!
🥸 Tips & Tricks & Tools 🧰
How to make your own Trail Tiles at home!
Trail Tile Refills is a dream of ours, but they are not a small endeavor. Furthermore, we don’t want anything to keep you from refilling your nifty tins. Lastly, why not also encourage you to play and experiment with other papers or even different sizes.
Corner Hole Punch [This one has many options and makes rounding the corners quite easy.]
Fibrin A4 Paper Cutter [Highly recommend adding the extra cutting blade replacements. Watercolor paper will wear them down sooner than copier paper, etc..]
NOTE: To replenish your Trailbound Trail Tile Tins, you’ll need to cut 3.5in (9cm) x 3.5in (9cm) squares.
Trailbound Community Artist Ann-C with a both safe and cool way to protect but also easily flip through her small works of art.
Now, what the heck to do with all these colorful mini Trail Tile sketches and paintings?
The introduction of Trail Tiles has been a fun game-changer for me and our community. It has been so much fun having these exist. It’s even more fun to see what all of you do with yours, too! But, we are left with a lot of small paintings and the questions of how to store or display them.
Here’s how we like to archive or display Trail Tiles:
Archival sleeves in a 3-ring binder. These can be hard to acquire, but here are a couple of places to source them: Print File Archival Storage, & Adorama
Small cute square frames! The options are ENDLESS, but here’s a style I’ve been digging for Trail Tile paintings I gift to friends and family.
If you would enjoy even MORE inspiration, check-out these Discord Channels = #24-day-series, #footprints-on-katmai, #trailbound-alaska-series, and #painting-the-big-picture. We’ve seen so many incredible ways to display and especially impressed by those of you who HAND-CUT custom mats to display your completed big pictures.
🎨 Community Inspiration 🎨
Filling In The Blank Page — Trailbound Community Art Series
Earlier this year, Trailbound Community Artist Krissie_al reflected on her 12 favorite memories of 2024, one sketch for each month of the year, and used the 24 Day Watercolor Series as a “template” to create her OWN big picture and we think it is AWESOME. It is also a really cool approach and example of how to approach this year’s Inktober.
Filling In The Blank Page — Trailbound Community Art Series
Over the summer, Trailbound Community Artist Vimal Mollyn completed our beloved Footprints on Katmai Watercolor Series.
This one series is so near and dear to our hearts and especially love seeing how educators of all ages have incorporated this story into the classroom. It was one of our first attempts of creating a short film WITH complimenting watercolor series that honored two people who inspire a lot of what we do at Trailbound — Bob Ross & Bill Nye The Science Guy, because who doesn’t want to paint a mamma bear and her baby while ALSO learning about bears from a for real bear scientist?!?!
💛 Paint It Forward 🎁
“I love painting the trail tiles and sharing them in random spots. But this spot was a "Little Free Art Library" in Arlington, Washington. If I know I am biking up that way, I'll try to bring a few things to share. Hope they all end up in good homes, if not, I've had the fun of doing and sharing them. Thanks Max for encouraging sharing art with the world. It gives me so much joy! ~ Trailbound Discord Artist @Cindy P. (April 22, 2025)
🖼️ Share Your Artwork ✍🏼
Sharing the work of our community means a lot to us. Whether it’s a work in progress, you completed one of our many watercolor tutorials or series, or you’ve painted it forward in a neat way that might inspire others to do the same — please send it our way or post it within the Trailbound Discord Community.
Below are all the ways to share and connect with us directly or fellow Trailbound Community. Additionally, if you love what we do and would like to support the creation of more free resources and videos, check out the list below.
🤖 Share with our private Trailbound Community in our Discord Server (invites delivered via email).
🔖 Tag @trailboundsketches on Instagram
📨 eMail us at create[AT]trailboundsketches[DOT]com
💌 snail mail your letters and art for Max to Trailbound LLC, PO Box 140124, Anchorage, AK 99514
👕 Pick up a Trailbound Sketches Shirt at our new Bonfire Store Front!
🖼️ If you love what we do and would like to support the creation of public access content — Buying art prints goes a long way at covering the cost of creating free YouTube watercolor tutorials. Payment plan options are now available, too.
Stay curious! Have fun! Paint it forward!
Thank you for being a member of the Trailbound Community!
~ Team Trailbound 🎨
