Purple Inkwell Studios · About the Creator
April Martin
Artist, author, illustrator, educator, veteran, and founder of Purple Inkwell Studios.
I create visual worlds, story-driven artwork, brand identities, websites, classes, and creative materials for people building something meaningful.
Story · Image · Lived Experience
About the Creator
I’m April Martin, an artist, writer, illustrator, and educator based in Kentucky. My work lives at the intersection of story, image, and lived experience. I’m interested in how people make meaning, how they survive what they’ve been through, and how creativity becomes a way back to the self.
Before founding a studio or publishing creative work, I served as a B-1 Bomber Crew Chief in the United States Air Force. That experience shaped how I approach discipline, systems, resilience, responsibility, and the emotional cost of carrying what others may never see.
After leaving the military, I earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography and spent more than a decade building inclusive creative spaces. From 2009 to 2023, I founded and directed Amagination Studios, where I taught drawing, painting, photography, and visual storytelling to students of all ages and abilities, including many neurodivergent students.
In 2024, I closed my brick-and-mortar studio and founded Purple Inkwell Studios. What began as a rebuilding period became a return to long-form writing, illustration, visual storytelling, and deep creative focus. Today, Purple Inkwell functions as both a working studio and an archive for my narrative worlds, artwork, classes, and client projects.
Creative Philosophy
Art Is Not Decoration
I don’t believe art exists simply to decorate life. I believe it exists to help people stay human.
As a neurodivergent artist, I understand how isolating the world can feel when your inner language does not match the systems around you. Story became my way of translating experience into something shareable. Over time, that grew into a guiding belief:
Story is a form of survival technology.
What I Create
Studio Work
Brand Design
Logos, business cards, stickers, signage, print materials, visual systems, and brand assets for small businesses and creative entrepreneurs.
Squarespace Websites
Simple, beautiful, manageable websites for artists, authors, service providers, makers, educators, and small businesses.
Illustration & Artwork
Original artwork, character design, book illustration, visual worlds, commissions, story assets, and symbolic mixed-media pieces.
Classes & Workshops
Creative classes, art journaling, storytelling sessions, symbolic mixed-media projects, and community-centered workshops.
Areas of Focus
The Threads That Guide the Work
Signature Worlds & Projects
Stories, Symbols, and Worlds
Ladybird Jenkins
A middle-grade story world of mystery, time, belonging, neurodivergent students, and an academy built around curiosity, courage, and hidden histories.
GOD.exe / The City Without Noise
A cyber-noir myth exploring silence, compliance, control, memory, and the moment when survival becomes rebellion.
The Mythic Self
A symbolic art and journaling practice rooted in archetypes, personal myth, mixed media, creative reflection, and transformation.
The Umbrella Girls
A poetic visual series of quiet storms, dismal enchantment, emotional weather, paper-doll movement, and illustrated atmosphere.
Community & Teaching
Creative Spaces for Real People
Alongside my studio work, I volunteer with The Hive in Bowling Green, Kentucky, a nonprofit supporting neurodiverse adults. I travel monthly to lead art journaling, creative writing, collaborative storytelling, and imaginative group projects.
My teaching style is grounded, flexible, and human. I believe creative spaces should make room for different brains, different bodies, different communication styles, and different ways of entering the work.
Whether I am designing a brand, building a website, illustrating a character, teaching a class, or writing a fictional world, my goal is the same: to create something that feels alive, useful, memorable, and emotionally true.
Work With Purple Inkwell Studios
I work with small businesses, artists, writers, educators, service providers, community groups, and creative people who need thoughtful visual support.
Meet the Team
