We celebrate Christmas in our house. And this year V was off work for both Christmas day and Boxing Day (it’s a Brit thing), so we have had a busy week. Actually with two days of friends and family dinners and another play date and dinner for S, it’s been a really really busy week. And with that and being busy to the lead up to Christmas I never managed to finish my artwork for my Christmas post.
So I’m sneaking on now to share it with you and to just say…
Hope you had a happy holidays and have a great new year. And thanks for supporting me, my art and my blog.
I’m looking forward to sharing more art with you in the new year.
These two inkblot art pieces were inspired by a beautiful poinsettia I bought this month.
Green and red Poinsettia floriography inkblot artwork. The Poinsettia ~ Good cheer and success.
The poinsettia has more than one floriography meaning that i have found through research. This piece depicts the meaning “Good cheer and success” which no doubt is connected to it’s popularity as a decorative Christmas plant and it’s association with Christmas.
This second piece is another inkblot artwork featuring the poinsettia plant… this time leaving out the green ink.
Floriography inkblot of a poinsettia with the meaning of purity.
From research I have found it stated that the Aztecs gave the meaning of purity to the poinsettia. And that they used it’s red leaves for dye. Sometimes you learn more than you expect when studying up on something simple. Look up the meaning of a plant and end up reading a page on the Aztecs, their sacrifice beliefs and where they got dye from.
See you in the New Year everyone. Good cheer and success to you all!
Since I started selling my art on Zazzle and Spoonflower, I have realized that being social is a necessity to get my work seen and perhaps make one sale. And since then I’ve been on steep learning curve as to what marketing means to an artist.
Many think that selling your photography or artwork on a POD site (print on demand website) is a simple and quick way to make money from your creative efforts. But it’s anything but quick, simple and by no means easy.
Starting out I expected to spend majority of my time creating the art, followed by creating designs for POD sites from said art and finally promoting. But the reality has been in fact the reverse. I have at times spend majority of my time networking or socializing, followed by designing for the POD sites, and then some artwork. Which may not sound like a big deal, except for me it matters as my time in the to create is already short. But I still do it anyway. I do it because because without networking and socializing nobody would see my art, or my blog. Let alone my art of the POD sites. Often I do it religiously, sometimes I take a break for a couple of days, or more. I follow advice I have been given. And I try all the social media networking/marketing advice I find. Post regularly and I try to not go a huge amount of time between blog posts (which is hard because I don’t like posting till I’ve completed a project which may be more than one piece in my mind when I start out. But through all of that I sometimes…….Actually quite often find myself looking at the screen like this.
Peek a Hoo, I see you!
And wondering Do you see me?
You see for the most part, the only time I can see someone has read my blog, or liked my work, and designs is if they tell me. Be it through a simple like or comment, even an email, or a simple mention, share on their profiles and pages, or re-tweet. Without those I can’t tell what you think or if you have even read what I have written. Yes I have statistics for this website…but they are very vague. It doesn’t say if you liked something….sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the visits from genuine folks and the bots or spammers with their dubious shoe sales. So often when I publish new posts and network on all the different social sites, I sometimes wonder if anyone sees me? Sometimes it feels like I am talking into the massive abyss that is the world wide web. The proverbial tree in an internet forest. If I post something and no-one is there to read it, does it make an impact of any kind?
I create to be creative as it is what I love. And I also wish to show S that you can still try to do something that makes you happy even if its not a nine to five that’s guaranteed to make a living. So I wont stop doing so, because I cannot see who’s listening to me. And I wont stop sharing in case someone is.
So I shall just have to continue to be inspired and create. And I shall continue to share.
And I shall probably also still often find myself staring at the computer screen,
Peek-a-hoo
still like this looking for that spec of encouragement.
Still wondering are you out there? Can you see me?
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.
Tis the season to break out the twinkly and gaudy decorations. And for kids to write letters that start with,
Dear Santa, in metallic red paint effect.
All in the hopes that they get beautiful, neatly wrapped presents, in paper like this,
Merry Christmas in Check.
marked,
From Santa, in red metallic paint effect.
On Christmas Day.
Now that Halloween and Thanksgiving is behind us for another year, we can emerge ourselves in the Christmas spirit. I don’t know about you, but I prefer not to start with Christmas until the 1st of December. I don’t count the days or sleeps starting from August. I don’t break out the decorations ready for Thanksgiving. I just wait till December starts….well with the exception of some present buying. As having family across the pond negates a little premature preparation, in order to send it to them in time (I’m always too late for the post office deadline, one day i’ll make it).
But once December hits and the space has been cleared for one of these,
Squiggly Christmas Tree.
then its time to get,
Ready For Santa, in red paint effect.
We break out the numerous boxes hidden last January in the hunt for lots of these,
A Christmas Bauble In Blue.
A Christmas Bauble In Green.
And we may even get around to hanging one of these on the door this year,
Squiggly Christmas Wreath
And watch countless movies on tv. Featuring the big man in read with his eight,
Christmas Stag.
Stag.
Or perhaps look out the window to beautiful wintery scenes and wildlife,
The Robin.
But most of all this month I shall be wishing eveyone. My family, friends, and all of you,
A VERY….
I’ll try to post most if not all, hell maybe even more my my artwork and photos on there and it can be used as more of a gallery page.
I’m currently working on artwork for my next post. In that post I will tell you how I made all the Valentines artwork.
For this posts imagery I’ll share an old photo of mine that shall feature in my next post. It was taken in Colorado on my old phone. We came across the longest line of tanker cars I have ever seen stored on some side tracks. They actually curve around in front of us far off in the distance. I lost sight of where they ended.
