01/02/21 update

February 01, 2021

Before I get into my recent work, I'll just acknowledge some stuff I did before Christmas that I didn't get round to posting about. I made adaptations of two works; The Seasons by Alphonse Mucha and Jimson Weed / White Flower no.1 by Georgia O'Keefe respectively:

The Seasons Alphonse Mucha (1896)

Jimson Weed / White Flower no.1 Georgia O'Keefe 1936

The idea was to study the pieces and to adapt them for my project concept to try and develop my ideas further. For The Seasons, I researched into flowers that grew in each season that also matched with the personalities I associated with them. I used crocus meaning cheerfulness for spring, snapdragon meaning presumption for summer, chysanthemum meaning condolences for autumn and snowdrop meaning hope for winter.

For White Flower no.1, I was already given a flower: datura meaning deception. O'Keeffe's work has been analysed as beeing representative of female sexuality; the floral organs being likened to cisgender female genitalia. To achieve a similar idea, I emphased the mouth.

This past week and a bit, I've been working on my first illustration for my series. I decided to base it on the aster flower which has strong connections to mythology. I found three stories using the flower from this post from a former professor of the University of Vermont. He doesn't give any sources for the stories so I can't verify whether they are correct or not. But I'm not too concerned about the "canon" of mythology, especially greek, since stories vary between storytellers. Out of the three stories I took the most inspiration from the one about Astraea.

According to The Complete Language of Flowers by Theresa Dietz, the astrea means:

"Afterthought; Beautiful crown; Daintiness; Differences; Elegance; Fidelity; Gained wisdom and good fortune; I will think of it; I will think of thee; I will think of you; Jealousy; Love; Love of variety; Magical; Patience; Symbol of love; Talisman of love; True yet; Variety."

Additionally, the book specifically refers to the china aster so that is the specific plant that I will use as reference. As the name suggests, it is native to China and comes in a large variety of colours and flower heads. They are typically bushy like a chrysanthenum but I have found images of china asters that are more daisy-like.

Development work:

First composition ideas. I knew I wanted to use the association with stars
through Astraea and the shape of the flower being compared to a star.

I sketched out my character in walking gear based on my outdoors idea.
I wanted her hair to look a little like an aster.
I sketched out an idea for the same stargazing concept but inside.

I started to play with colour.

At this point I had begun to collect references.

And this is my most recent draft.

Recently, I've been reading comics and I finally got round to reading Watchmen. While it does the same overrendering of the faces that I dislike in western comics, I love the colouring. I love how block colour is used to differenciate between the planes of a space. This creates depth in a flat image much like the work of Japanese Ukiyo-e block printers like Hokusai and Hiroshige. An example of this in Watchmen is this panel in chapter one:

Here, colour is organised from warm to cool with pinks and reds in the back, yellows and greens in the middle and blues and purples in the foreground. I wanted to give this type of colouring a shot so I tried it out. I think it fits the illustration concept well as china astrels are brightly coloured.

I am currently happy with the composition. I think that I have used my literary contexts well. Since it isn't finished and this post is long enough, I'll explain my thought process more in depth once I have a finished illustration.