A New Logo.

August 20, 2014August 20, 2014

Till now I’ve been more interested in the painting and the drawing.

…….at least whenever I can achieve it.

I let the branding and presentation side slide…mostly because I got distracted with the art side, but also because I was putting off figuring out how to edit WordPress to being exactly as I wanted it.

But after while I just couldn’t pretend I didn’t mind the shabby and not very well put together look I have. so I decided to stop procrastinating. And so now I shall be fitting in between art posts work on my presentation.

It’s a slow work in progress. And i shall be working on it bit by bit. progressively over time. So please don’t expect an over night complete transformation.

But today I do have one improvement to show you. A new Inspired Me Studio. I figured it was time to have one and maybe the best place to start.

It took a while to figure out not just what I wanted and what was expected of a logo but also what represented Inspired Me Studio the best.

This was something I found challenging. At first I was more concerned with the text and displaying the name. But this didn’t get me anywhere. It wasn’t until i stopped and thought about what it was I was offering, that was able to make any progress on starting. I realized that a logo was more than just a signature or displaying your name. It has to tell a story. It had to tell Inspired Me Studios story. And What Inspired Me Studio was about and what I offered.

Firstly lets start with what I am and what I have to offer. I am an artist and a designer. I knew that that important aspect must be the main focus of my logo. I needed to include a piece of my art but something compact and unique to me.

I had recently revisited a style of art that really enjoyed and its something that you don’t see commonly. I decided it would work perfectly for this project so I took that style and went with it.

But first I had to decide what to draw. Something simple and compact. Not a fine art piece of a landscape. But something that told my story.

But how do you choose which elements of a long story to tell. If you have read my about page and been following my blog till now. you would already know that I am an English transplant, now living in Southern California with my husband and young daughter. You’d know I have a background in both art and fashion design. And you would know that my daughter played a big part in Inspiring me to start creating again and Inspired Me Studio, blog and all. That I have many hopes for the path inspired Me Studio will take me on. It’s a very much personal journey to me. But how do I incorporate all that into a simple logo? It took a lot of thought and consideration. What would represent all that?

i decided to take inspiration from a form of symbolism I am a fan of, floriography.

Floriography reminded me that many things have symbolic meanings including flowers. I chose to use a flower in my logo. But not for its floriography meaning. I wanted something that would be aesthetically pleasing in my painting style which could also represent my Daughter, for all her influence in my starting this endeavor. Her name literally is Star in another language. I found many flower examples that were known to have star shaped flowers and I felt a flower would best represent her beautiful nature. I chose the ever climbing cypress vine. for its beautiful red star shaped flowers.

**In case you are curious i have yet to find a meaning for the cypress vine on its own… but apparently according to one site i read when combined with Marigold it stands for despair, not quite the feelings the flower invokes in myself. If anyone finds a nicer meaning for the cypress vine i would love to hear it.

So I created some ink blots in a beautiful red ink and sketched a cypress vine flower and leaves in gold oil based sharpie. Ink blots are most beautiful i find when symmetrically mirrored. So decided to make the logo so too.

A messy mess. So much fun to create.

Flowers, especially trumpet flowers also go very well hand in hand with another component of my logo……hummingbirds. Hummingbirds feed nectar from trumpet shaped flowers. And are attracted to brightly colored flowers. For my last post I drew a few hummingbirds and cypress vines. That post was inspired by the hummingbirds I have been watching in my garden. I decided to reuse one of my hummingbird illustrations for my logo. I found the symbolism of the hummingbird inspiring and very apt for what Inspired Me Studio both means to me and also my hopes and intentions. Hummingbirds it is said, represent lightness and joy. their ability to fly in many directions fast and hover in one spot reminds us to continue to keep moving forwards. but not forget to remember to occasionally stop and savor life’s beauty. The meanings that have been attributed to these beautiful and mostly tiny birds resonate with me greatly.

My Hovering Hummingbird from my previous post.

So by this point I had all the elements of my logo, bar the text which chose to hand draw to match the style of the hummingbird. And put them all together in an antithetical form.

And here it is…my mirrored ink blot, hummingbird, cypress vine, daughter inspired, new logo with personal spiritual meaning.

And here it is. The new Inspired Me Studio logo

What do you think? not too shabby huh? I’m pretty in love with its imagery. Perhaps I wont do too badly with this revamp after all! Now whats next on my list?….

OH JOY!……See you on the About Me page…….. in say 4 months, or longer. That one may take some time.

Hovering Hummingbird Illustration Porcelain Plate by InspiredMeStudio
Create unique custom plates online at Zazzle.

I owe you a valentine.

March 5, 2014October 5, 2015Leave a comment

I’ve owed you this post for over a month. In fact I have been working on the artwork for this post since way before Valentines day. For one reason or another I got distracted by so many things I never got to finish the different drawings and idea I had going. Such is life I guess of the artist/mummy.

I was inspired to create an tongue in cheek annotated study of a Valentine’s card. When I started I was really enjoying it. I decided to create the artwork digitally and use watercolour paints and black ink pen effects.

I figured the art piece would need a title.

Ribbon banner…Annotated study of the best Valentine ever!

Love me, love you…..I figured there would be writing theres always soppy messages on a Valentine’s card.

Watercolour Heart.

Because love hearts are the quintessential icon of love.
At this point I decided it was best and easier to create individual elements that I thought would be obligatory parts of an awesome valentine. Then later on I could splice the, together to make one.

Cupids Arrow

I figured Cupid needed to feature somewhere.

Yarn Ball Heart

Yarn Ball Heart with shading.

The Yarn Ball Heart image is an illustration of a ball of yarn, in the shape of a heart. I was going somewhere with this, as you will see next.

Yarn Ball Heart gains a kitty. Screenshot of work in progress.

The initial makings of a teddy bear. Screenshot of work in progress.

Almost all Valentine’s have a featured cartoon person or character. Something or someone soppy, cute or funny. Which is where I was going with both the teddy bear and the cat. But this is where things started unraveling. I am my worst critic of my work. And I don’t really feel I can do cartoon work. I struggled to get a good flow from the start on both. And was never happy with what I made. Perpetually erasing and restarting. Till I got as far as you can see in these screenshots. The problem with not feeling like I getting it right over and over and over is I start loosing interest. The desire to continue wanes and I lose the energy to propel myself forward to the end. That coupled with the fact that I lost the inspiration behind my cat illustration just very recently (my awesome, front door knocking, mint and roast potato thieving, bigger character than any human, cat of almost 15 years. And whom we had from the very start of his life. Lost a fight with a car. The next artwork I finish inspired by him feel needs to be something as awesome as him……or at least something I’m proud of and feel connected to. I will probably finish this annotated valentine at some point. But for now I need to stop looking at it. And get rid of that “need to finish now” feeling.

So with all that said…….

I still owe you a Valentine.

Yarn Ball Heart Tee Shirt by InspiredMeStudio
Check out Black and white sketch T-Shirts online at zazzle

Trick or Treat!

October 26, 2013July 11, 2014

Full Moon.

It’s that time of year again. Halloween madness is right around the corner! Or already in full swing if you’re inclined to “celebrate” the whole month. Not that I mind that, as it’s one of my favorite holidays since S was born. Most probably because it was the first holiday that came up after her birth.

After my last painting and the lengthy blog post, I needed to try something quicker, easier, and requiring less of an essay to explain. So I decided to try out another app, called iOrnament on my IPad. And get into the Halloween spirit by making some simple Halloween patterns and scribbles to share, along with some apropos photos. I’ve quite enjoyed learning about patterns or as Jürgen Richter-Gebert, (mathematics professor at the Technical University of Munich, and creator of the program used for the app) refers to them, wallpapers. Although the mathematics aspect does go over my head some what (I’ve never been that gifted in that subject). Either way it’s interesting to read and fun and easy to use my daughter has even made some patterns). It also also reminded me that at some point I would love to design fabric prints. I think that would be fun, if not just because its bringing me back to fashion design which I loved.

Daddy Pumpkin, Mummy pumpkin, and Baby Pumpkin. Our first Jack O’Lanterns after S was born.

So here are some Halloween themed patterns or wallpapers, which ever you would like to call them.

Beetles, Beetles everywhere. Beetle inspired pattern in black and white.

Dancing Spiders. Probably my biggest foe on planet earth. I am not embarrassed to say I suffer from pretty bad arachnophobia.

Cobwebs. Because when you think of Halloween, there has to be spiders and cobwebs.

Zoomed out image of the above cobweb pattern.

Bat print.

A less symmetrical cobweb print, complete with spiders.

Jack O’Lantern faces.

A close-up of one of the Jack O’Lantern faces.

Bats, second attempt. More details in the silhouette of these bats and the spacing is different.

A zoomed out capture of the second bat print above.

Swirls in darkness. I was trying to create an abstract interpretation in print, of a night sky. My intention was to use it in another image.

Cats eyes circle print. Inspired by cats eyes. Overlapped in a circular fashion.

Zoom out of the same, cat eyes circle print.

Spider meeting. Eight spiders of red and green.

Spiders meeting as a print.

It was really enjoyable and relaxing just doing whimsical and nonsensical prints and doodles, after all the energy the Newfoundland beach painting took. I also really enjoyed playing at patterns.
I think in the near future I would have fun playing with fabric print patterns.

But for now I’ll just wish you all a happy Halloween.

Spider Dance Print Teapot by InspiredMeStudio
Browse more Spiders Teapots

Happy Valentines Day!

February 14, 2013July 11, 20141 Comment

Happy Valentines Day to all my fellow soppy romantics!

I don’t have much to share with you today except for some soppy doodles inspired by today.
I won’t share with you the medium as it’s going to be part of my next post idea. These doodles were mostly practice and playing around. But let’s see if you can guess how I made them and what with? It will be interesting to see if anyone guesses correctly.

Here’s pictures three to six. Enjoy and happy guessing.

Valentines Scribble

Painted foil hearts…

Pointillism Heart

Paint dots.

There is a number seven that I intended to upload with these but it’s not finished yet. Perhaps I will upload it in the next two days if I finish it as a bonus post.

But for now I’m going to celebrate today with V and S.

Happy Valentines Day readers!

Pointillism Heart Postcard by InspiredMeStudio
See more I love you Postcards

A New Blog

September 4, 2012July 11, 2014

Hello and welcome to my arty blog. My name is Hannah, I live with my wonderful husband V and my beautiful daughter S. I’m a stay at home mum who loves design, art and fashion of which I’ve studied. I’m also an expat from the other side of the pond (Kent, U.K.), but now reside on the West Coast of U.S.A.

Inspired Me Studio blog is less a blog more a diary…scrap that it’s a sketchbook. Or rather a sketchbook diary. And it’s also a challenge. A challenge I’ve set for myself and to be shared with you all.

There’s a lot of inspiration in this world, and I intend to embrace as much as I can. And be open to any creativity that may follow it.

I love to be creative. I love to paint, sew, draw, design and this will be my get creative project. My excuse to squeeze in some extra time to paint or draw or whatever takes my fancy.

Whenever I’m inspired by something in my day to day life I will use that inspiration to creative something. An art piece or two, or more. Which I will then share with you all on here. I’m going to set myself a target number of which I will aspire to. It’s 10411. It’s not a random number, and it’s probably going to take forever to reach if I do ever manage to get there. But I’ll have fun trying and counting my way there.

It’s inspired by my beautiful daughter, who inspired me to do this “art project”. She inspires me in so many ways. But mostly she opens my eyes to the beauty of the world and life. And makes me realise more so, how much I want to remember every day spent on this earth that she is on. I’m not really a writer (which is I’m sure obvious from this page), but this diary will be a fun way to look back at our days together. It will be a fun did you know your mother did” story to tell her. I will have fun making it and I hope you all have fun reading it.

For this posts imagery, I’m going leave with you with a work in progress. It’s the first one. A tidbit of my next post. hopefully I’ll be happy with it and it will make it to my next post. Perhaps it may even have company.
Enjoy

Hannah

Inspired Me Studio

A Pictorial Diary

Category: design

A New Logo.

I owe you a valentine.

Trick or Treat!

Happy Valentines Day!

A New Blog