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explaining the inside of your mind isn’t easy.

You don’t think twice about your ideas. They pop up in your head, you recognize them, visualize them, and slowly extract them piece by piece until they are alive on paper. It feels like they’re pouring out of your mind and down through your hand. For me, it’s more of a feeling than a thought process. As a very visual person, feelings and emotions are the most tangible when you can look at them. So when someone asks you to put this exact thought process into words, it takes you back a bit.

But the challenge of this communication is actually quite fun. Your abstract ideas might be special and hold emotional value to you, but it’s even more special to see the concept that was once too abstract to explain be transferred to someone else’s mind. To see them affected by it the way you are, that’s an entirely new experience.

Therefore, I’ve put a lot of thought into my ideas that I consider to be abstract. I know the more I learn to communicate these ideas, the better I will be professionally and even personally within my own relationships.

In order to personally brand my own style, I thought it would be best to summarize it all through designing my own logo. The process is shown in the video above. Most of my art and illustrations feature the use of very fluid and colorful line work. The lines usually appear to be out of place and interrupt or distort the sense of reality of the subject of the work - usually a person. This represents a particular essence, thought, or strong overwhelming feeling. The meaning of the lines are usually left up to the interpretation of the viewer - because we all feel and relate to things differently.

My overall goal is to capture the individual’s essence. We all have an essence, whether it be anywhere from strong and overpowering when we enter the room to elegant and peaceful floating in the corner. Each are different and equally beautiful. I think the concept of every person having their own unique essence is really powerful and worth exploring. Just like my lines, a person’s spirit is hard to put directly into words because it is more of the sense you get when you are around them and their energy. So, the challenge of making a personality visual was one I couldn’t stray from. I discovered the many ways to convey this in a person’s portrait — color, expression, motion, and so many more. Pushing further, I realized I could combine all of those and use them to distort the sense of reality that is created in a realist style portrait. That is when the stylized lines appeared.

Once I started incorporating this theme and inspiration into my pieces, I realized it wasn’t easy to explain to people. And that’s when I realized it was special.

Since this has become my style and way of thinking, it seemed fitting to make my logo my initials in the style of the lines themselves. I thought hard about the curvature and flow of the inside lines and played with using them to make an actual font for my letters. The result is a visual manifestation of the essence that I have tried to capture in all of my different illustrations. They all have their own spirit, and so does my logo.