Hawaii 2023 Logo Patch

The logo for our 30th anniversary 2023 Hawaiʻi trip is an adventure patch. All that stitching took a lot of time! Well, sort of.

Every time we go on a major trip (the definition of which changes over time), I like to come up with a logo for that trip. I then use that logo as an anchor for the “home base” website page about the trip, which hopefully makes that trip page easy to find. I also often use that logo in link graphics on other parts of the Burnsland site, too.

Sometimes a challenge is figuring out what that logo should be. Once we returned home from our Hawaiʻi trip, I started thinking about what all we saw. We saw beaches and mountains and palm trees. We could see one mountain in particular as we would walk along the beach at night, so I drew something resembling the shape of that mountain. I then added a lagoon beach in front of it, and I threw in a couple of palm trees for good measure, and I had something to start with.

I then thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if there were a patch for our Hawaiʻi adventure?” I am not really sure where that thought came from, because we do not usually buy or use patches in any way. But I still thought it would be interesting, so I gave it a try to see if I could make it work.

The result is what you can see above. Patches involve a lot of stitching, so I had to draw things that way. Each one of those “stitches” is a hand-drawn line. If there was a way to automate that with some sort of stitch brush, I was not aware of it. And sometimes, the longer way is often the best way.

I first did the “stitching” around the edge of the patch. Once I had added the shading to give it some depth, I felt like I was getting the look that I wanted. So I then drew all the stitching for the mountain, beach, and trees. I was happy with the result.

Different Views

When I showed Laura the final artwork, she thought it looked like a piece of wood art, similar to some things we had seen in Hawaiʻi. And when I looked at it with that reference, I could see it that way, too.

That was not necessarily what I was going for, but I decided that worked, too. In fact, I thought about not even explaining what I had in mind, but just sharing it and letting you decide what it looks like. But as you can see, I decided to go ahead and present my take on it. If you see it another way, that is fine, too. The main goal is to tie the posts from our Hawaiʻi trip together, and if the artwork does that, then it has served its purpose.

The Shape

Also, if you are wondering about the odd shape of the patch, that was intentional as well. I wanted some shape that would stand out more than just a circle, square, or rectangle. I briefly thought about using a hexagon, because that shape seems to be somewhat trendy these days.

But I ultimately decided on this parallelogram shape. Why? Because it loosely resembles the shape of Tennessee, where we live. That might only matter to me, but now you know.

The Process

The amount of time I spent working on this was probably more than what I spend on much of the art I share here. That was because of that process of drawing all of those individual lines. But then, for a while I did not have much else to do.

The week after our trip, we had a big storm come through our area on a Sunday evening. That storm caused lots of tree damage, which in turn caused lots of power line damage. At our house, we were without power until the Wednesday of that week. Fortunately, my iPad was charged enough that I could work on this. So instead of doing much else, because there was not much else I could do, I worked on this art. If the power had not gone out, this would have taken me a lot longer to complete. I always find it interesting just how much we depend on electricity!

12 Then Jesus spoke out again, “I am the light of the world! The one who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” - John 8:12