Purple Inkwell Studios
April Martin
Stories, drawings, photographs, and strange worlds exploring mythology, psychology, memory, beauty, and the human condition.
New Original Meditation Art / Umbrella Girls · Series I
Elara: The Girl Who Carries the Storm.
She isn’t waiting for the storm to end. She’s learning how to exist within it.
Elara is one of six Umbrella Girls, representing anxiety. layered textures, repeating circles, and shifting metallic colors echo thoughts that overlap, repeat, and sometimes become overwhelming. Use this meditative art piece to calm your mind.
Made to hang on a wall or rest in your lap for quiet meditation, this one-of-a-kind original invites you to explore its details and find a moment of stillness within the chaos.
I created Elara while exploring art that serves more than one purpose: something that can live on a wall, yet also be brought down, held close, and experienced as a personal meditation piece.
Each girl in the Umbrella Girls series represents a different experience with mental illness. Elara represents anxiety. The layers, textures, circular patterns, and shifting metallic colors reflect the complexity of an anxious mind: thoughts overlapping, repeating, and sometimes becoming overwhelming.
Then there is her umbrella. She is not waiting for the storm to end; she is learning how to exist within it.
Sometimes peace isn't the absence of chaos. It's learning how to find yourself somewhere within it.
This is the first in a collection of original meditation artworks where storytelling, mental-health awareness, and tactile art come together.
11 × 14 in original mixed-media artwork
Includes 8 × 10 companion print
+ printed artist’s statement
Words · Images · Worlds
I write strange stories and draw the worlds they leave behind.
Purple Inkwell Studios is the creative home of writer, illustrator, and photographer April Martin, bringing together illustrated fiction, traditional artwork, photography, characters, and collectible pieces.
Stories are only the beginning. The world keeps going.
Christmas 2026 / Commissions Open
Make their gift a story.
Original 11 × 17 illustration and one-page comic commissions, created one at a time for one person at a time. Characters, pets, memories, strange ideas, and story-driven gifts are welcome.
View Commissions →Original Works / One of One
The Artist's Drawer
A collection of curious things pulled from the studio.
Original sketches, character studies, and finished works. Pencil marks, textures, and happy accidents included. Every physical original is its own singular piece.
SKETCHES · STUDIES · ORIGINALS
Browse Original Artwork →
The Creative Archive
Portfolio Ledger.
Art is not merely what we create. It is what we leave behind.
An evolving collection of traditional illustration, photography, visual storytelling, conceptual work, and the mythologies behind the art. Explore the process, the experiments, and the worlds that shape Purple Inkwell Studios.
Explore the Portfolio →
01 / Featured Story
When a traveling carnival arrives in a quiet town, a lonely girl discovers that applause can be more dangerous than cruelty and that some audiences never stop clapping.
Enter the Carnival
02 / Illustrated Story
In a city where shadows are born from the pain others refuse to face, the Keeper remains awake, carrying the darkness so everyone else can sleep.
Enter the City03 / Explore the Studio
Stories · Characters · Art
Different doors into the same creative practice, imagined worlds, illustrated characters, photographic work, and objects made to exist beyond the page.
The Umbrella Girls
Illustrated characters, paper dolls, environments, and collectible artwork.
Meet the Girls →Collect the Art
Original artwork, fine-art photography, archival prints, and limited pieces from Purple Inkwell Studios.
Visit the Shop →Photography
Fine-art photography and selected photographic works available as prints.
View Photography →04 / Learn at Purple Inkwell
The Teaching Hub.
A place to learn the craft behind the work, try something new, and keep making.
Creative instruction for artists, writers, makers, and curious minds.
Explore practical lessons, thoughtful exercises, demonstrations, and workshop resources across encaustics, art journaling, creative writing, composition, mixed media, and visual storytelling.
Learn by doing.
Materials, process, layering, composition, mixed media, and hands-on creative practice.
Find the story.
Voice, memory, character, visual storytelling, prompts, and ways into the page.
Learn together.
In-person workshop schedules, class resources, project guides, and materials for participants.
The Teaching Hub brings together independent learning resources and dedicated pages for community workshops.
Enter the Teaching Hub05 / From the Studio
NOWWhat is being made right now.
Purple Inkwell is a working studio, not a finished archive. This is the corner of the homepage that changes as the work changes, a small field note from whatever is currently on the page, the drawing table, or the classroom.
The Day the Carnival Came
Shaping illustrated fiction into a continuous visual novella, with sequential art, poster-like interruptions, and uneasy quiet.
Characters & strange little worlds
Pen-and-ink studies, visual storytelling experiments, and pieces that may become prints, pages, or something unexpected.
Creative workshops
Building accessible, thoughtful workshops in art, writing, photography, and mixed media through the Teaching Hub.
06 / Behind the Inkwell
Hi, I'm April.
I make strange little worlds about very human things.
I'm interested in memory, identity, belonging, control, imagination, and all the complicated ways we try to understand ourselves and one another.
Sometimes that becomes a story. Sometimes it becomes an illustration, a photograph, a character, or some odd little thing sitting on my studio table.
Purple Inkwell Studios is where all of those pieces finally stopped living in separate boxes.
I think stories help us make sense of being human.More About April
Precision came first.
Before the studio, I served as a B-1 Bomber Crew Chief in the United States Air Force, where patience, discipline, and attention to detail became second nature.
Then I learned how to see.
Photography taught me that every frame is a decision: what we reveal, what we hide, and how that changes the story.
Different minds find different doors.
Years of teaching art reinforced something I still believe deeply: there is rarely only one way into an idea.
Eventually, everything met.
Writing met illustration. Photography met design. Philosophy wandered into the room. Then the characters brought worlds with them.