Purple Inkwell Studios
April Martin
Stories, drawings, photographs, and strange worlds exploring mythology, psychology, memory, beauty, and the human condition.
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.
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 CarnivalExplore 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 →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.