07/02/21 update

I finished the aster illsutration last thursday. 

    The flower meaning that influenced my illustration the most was Love of variety. It personally reminded me of asexuality. Just to understand their sexuality, asexual people break down their experiences of love into categories. It’s important to do this because even though we don’t feel sexually attracted to others that doesn’t mean we are robots who can’t love at all.

    Alongside the flower meanings, I found three stories that used the aster: two from Greek mythology and one Cherokee legend. The story that most inspired the direction I took was the myth of Astraea.

    Astraea is the virgin goddess of innocence, justice, purity, and precision. In Greek mythology, there is a myth that once the gods lived amongst the people during the golden age. Over time, technology progressed during the bronze and iron ages. This resulted in the development of weapons and war and the gods fleeing to the heavens. Astraea was one of the last to leave earth and she became part of the sky as the constellation Virgo.  From the sky she watched over the humans and her tears fell to the earth and grew aster flowers.

    The second story is connected to myth of Theseus. When he left home to slay the minotaur, his father King Aegeus told him to raise white flags on his ship upon his return if he survives. Theseus did but he forgot to hoist the white flags. As a result, Aegeus saw the black flags instead of white and killed himself believing that his son was dead. Asters bloomed from where his blood spilled.

    The last story is from Cherokee legend in southern America. A village was razed amid a war between two tribes. All were killed apart from two sisters who wore doeskin dresses, one lavender-blue and one yellow. The girls sought out a herb woman for help who saw the tragic fate the girls would face. As they slept under the stars, the woman sprinkled them with magic brew and leaves. In the morning, two flowers were all that was left of the girls, one lavender-blue aster and one goldenrod.

    I decided pretty quickly that I wanted her to be stargazing and painting the sky. Also, I didn’t want the night sky actually in the composition since it felt like she was of the heavens not the earth. The character is a personification the aster not Astraea. I decided to move the setting inside since I thought that having an interior space would give me more room for environmental storytelling. 

For the main character, I modeled her hair after a china aster and used photos of chinese celebrites as reference for her face. For clothing, she has an ace ring representing asexuality. For the love of variety thing thats why the cat is there and the photo frame at the back which reference the story of the cherokee sisters. Both the painting and the calender are references to the virgo contellation. And the minotaur plushie is there because I couldnt think of a more substantial way to include that story and its cute.

I've decided that I'm doing hibiscus flower next.