Tucson artist Kath Macaulay is almost never without her trusted travel bag of art supplies.
The modified camera bag, which she carries with her in the field and in her daily life, holds her small pallet of water color paints, paintbrushes, the ankle of an athletic sock to blot her brushes on and film canisters filled with water. It also functions as a vital piece of artists equipment.
“At a moment's notice, it becomes an easel.” Macaulay said.
It’s not the kind of easel that has to be assembled, with legs and space for a large canvas. Instead, Macaulay uses the bag itself to rest her sketchbook against.
Macaulay has been an artist and teacher for decades, and the portable bag has been her primary tool-kit for years, allowing her to turn anywhere in the world into her artist's studio.
“I love being outdoors,” she said. “Most of my paintings I've done plein air.”
What she didn’t love was schlepping around an easel, tubes of paint, and all the other bulky supplies.
“I had a medical equipment sales job and one day off during the week, every week, and so all my oils were on one side of the front door, all my watercolors on the other side, and I'd go to the front door and decide which one I wanted to take.”
Instead, she said she always opted to take her easy-to-carry field kit.
Artwork by Tucson artist Kath Macaulay.
“I was a runner for 57 years. I ran with my dogs, and I could take this with me,” she said. “Wherever you are, it doesn't matter. This can go, and you can use it.”
And she means everywhere.
“I've gotten terrific sketches on layovers in airports,” she said. “I mean, you're sitting there and it's a fishbowl of people. You start with the guy on the computer because they hold still, then you work up. All around you, people are holding still. Somebody's knitting, somebody's reading, somebody is just trying to sleep.”
Kath Macaulay sits on her front porch and does a watercolor of the Santa Catalina Mountains in Tucson, Ariz. on September 30, 2026. Macaulay created "pocket sketching" and conducts workshops.
Macaulay specializes in a self-created technique called “Pocket Sketching.” Using water-soluble pens, and watercolor paints, she captures the landscape, people, and architecture around her in quick 25-minute paintings.
The 4-inch-by-6-inch pieces, painted directly in her booklet of watercolor paper, are both abstract and highly detailed as she captures the lighting and shapes of a scene.
Her signature style of painting and teaching uses pen ink as the base of her artworks, which was an accidental discovery she made while on an oil painting trip in the late ‘90s.
“I was sketching with India ink, and I turned around to write a note to a friend, and picked up a pilot pen,” Macaulay said. “I forgot to put the brush down because it was always in my hand, and started a note to John and then touched the line because it was a habit, and I said, ‘wait a minute, that ran.’”
While Macaulay said she has always had an interest in art and illustration, she didn’t pursue art as a career until later in her life.
“I majored in biology instead, and then I went on into medical research,” she said. “But I'm probably the only person that sketched a white rat while I was anaesthetizing it.”
She started painting in her free-time after moving to New Mexico with her husband. It was there that she met mentors and fellow artists, and dedicated herself to learning oil painting, then watercolor.
Eventually, she went back to school for marketing and began teaching art classes of her own, traveling across the country and even teaching at the University of Arizona.
“I wanted to find a niche in which I could make a living and enjoy myself and do something in art. What I didn't know was that the real reward is from the students,” Macaulay said.
Artwork by Tucson artist Kath Macaulay.
At 88-years-old, Macaulay is still teaching, passing on her pocket sketching technique to students and empowering them to hone their own creativity with watercolors.
“People can pick it up super, super, super fast,” she said. “It’s extremely easy to follow, and it's meant for people who are completely professional artists who've never had anything portable, and total novices.”
Her philosophy in teaching, Macaulay said, is to guide students learning through discovery.
“It is not the product, it's the doing that is important,” she said. “You slide into watercolor absolutely by accident, and it starts with the pen because it runs when you touch it with water. Then after that, you start adding color.”
When asked why students respond so well to her lessons, and to pocket sketching as a technique, Macaulay said the answer is simple.
“It's because it's fun,” she said. “The minute you start that sketch, everything around you disappears, and it's you and that piece of paper and what you're looking at, and there's no chaos.”
Kath Macaulay sits on her front porch and does a watercolor of the Santa Catalina Mountains in Tucson, Ariz. on September 30, 2026. Macaulay created "pocket sketching" and conducts workshops.
It’s like a timed meditation. The short time of concentrated effort also makes the art more approachable.
“I teach people to work within 25 minutes,” Macaulay said. “My interest goes downhill really fast, but 25 minutes, I can hold that interest for long.”
Sometimes, she said, she’ll even reward her discipline with an extra reward after.
“The reward is I either get a glass of wine, or I get to go play in the garden,” Macaulay said.
The other appeal of pocket sketching, Macaulay said, is the accessibility and low cost of materials.
She offers the kits, which include a paint set, a pad of paper, pen, a water container, and a color chart for $45. Her hope is that providing affordable, easily portable supplies, will encourage her students to continue using them and making art after the class.
Artwork by Tucson artist Kath Macaulay.
Currently, Macaulay teaches regular three-day sessions, online classes and a six-week course at The Drawing Studio which meets once a week. Her next three-day session begins Oct. 5 and runs through Oct. 7, and costs $400. Her upcoming online course starts Oct 17 and costs $290.
Each class follows a similar structure, starting with watercolor fundamentals and an introduction to using the water-soluble pens.
“One of the classes involves scraping and wax. I saw how much Sargent used wax in his watercolors and it's either used for filling an area or any highlight, it's awesome as a tool,” Macaulay said. “The last day is plein air, the day before that is people.”
She also has a multi-season show on PBS called Pocket Sketching with Kath Macaulay, with recorded lessons and demonstrations for anyone who wants to start their own painting journey at home.
“Sketch along,” she said. “It's a snap. Once you've done just a few of them, you can experiment. See what happens.”
