Recreating the Harecroft Horses logo

One of my favourite wild animals is our native brown hare.
I'd always liked them, but one almost magical experience nearly twenty years ago made me see them as something truly special. Mid winter, alone in a bitter-cold frozen paddock made sparkling by a low sun just reaching above the hedge line, and some little movement made me glance up; a hare, running steadily in a straight line across the field. For no apparent reason, quiet and unstartled, he veered off his line and ran a full circle around me, about fifteen feet from where I stood, turning to watch him as he went. When he'd rejoined his original line, he ran on away through the frost and was gone. A breathtaking encounter, and unforgettable.

Some time shortly after starting to show my Julips, back in 2001, I chose the name Harecroft Farm for my model horse herd. A couple of years later, I drew up a logo based on the fascinating and ancient three hares symbol, and used it in my website graphics, forum signatures, and as a watermark on any photos submitted to online resources like Stonehorseref. There's even a fictional pub named The Three Hares in my written work.
Unfortunately, over time, and in transferring files from one failing computer to another, and my website from old hosting to the current one, I'd lost my master copy of the logo, and no longer used it.

The other day, realising how long it had been missing from my Harecroft branding, I was thinking of recreating the original logo from a poor quality copy, as simple pixel art the way it used to be.
But then I thought, no, I can do better than that.
Graphics have moved on - whereas in 2002 a two-tone pixel art jpeg made with mouse clicks in Microsoft Paint was a decent enough stab at making something, these days I've got a Wacom tablet with a very clever pen, surely I can create a much better version now!

First of all, I drew up a rough of a running hare. He didn't need to be too large or too detailed, after all he'd soon become just a part of the bigger project. 
If you look up 'three hares logo' on google images you'll see all kinds of different artists' interpretations of the same logo, from beautifully realistic and detailed paintings, through to sleek and simplified digital outlines. Some of them look cute, some veer toward dramatic and slightly creepy. I wanted mine to be naturalistic and appealing but not overly stylised. Click to see him full size.

Once I'd made one hare, it was time to duplicate him round into the carefully aligned triangular trio, sharing just three ears between them. Getting the angles exactly right so the special redrawn ears matched up was very tricky, and because my mind's not mathematical in the slightest, I had to just judge it by eye and guesswork - in fact there was a tiny bit of scribbling and adjusting done to make them fit!

Here they are! Some illustrators draw from extra nature-based motifs for decorating their three hare pieces, like leaves or flowers, while others emphasise the symmetry with an elaborate border. But because mine is intended as a logo, I wanted it have a very simple open outline. 

On a plain white page, which I can change to any colour linework and overlay onto any background for making my website graphics.

Here's a couple of small bold-outlined copies, which will work as a light or dark watermark over photos, should I ever need to use one.

And finally, I couldn't resist putting some colour into the original hare rough and finishing him off nicely.