Huzzah! Behold, Virgo, my third Pop Culture Zodiac icon.
VIRGO (Aug23 – Sept22)
Domicile and Exaltation of Mercury
Detriment of Jupiter
Fall of Venus
Element: Earth
Mode: Mutable
It took me a while to choose an image for Virgo; as I’ve joked several times before, there are many many many kinds of women. I’m sure you all know that “virgo” is just Latin for “girl”, with strong connotations of young and unmarried that get pretty skeezy if you over emphasize them here in the 21st Century. So, when this image came to me, I just ran with it.
The pose took me two tries to nail down in a way that satisfied me: those elbows and shoulders are more technically difficult than they may look. I kinda wish I’d spent more time looking for a pose reference, but I’d already spent nearly two weeks just pondering and was more than ready to put pencil to paper.
The stained glass windows came out wildly different to what I originally imagined, but also vastly different to what I thought I could pull off. I absolutely abused the shit out of the symmetry and gradient tools to make them, and probably half again as many layers as were strictly necessary.
The sheaves of wheat were a very last-minute addition to the sketch and almost didn’t make it into the final image. I had a vague memory of the wheat, and I did find it in a LOT of other Virgo images on the internet, but I couldn’t find any particularly reliable-looking explanations for its association with the sun-sign. Ultimately, I decided to keep it: however ill-explained, the wheat motif definitely goes back long enough to be legit for the purposes of this visually-oriented project, and the diagonal splash of constrasting color does a LOT for the image.
I hope you all like this image as much as I do. While relatively simple in a lot of ways, it was technically and creatively challenging in ways Leo and Cancer weren’t. October’s sign, Libra, is going to be similarly difficult: a dude holding scales gives me a little more specific direction, but not a lot. It’s also going to be potentially challenging as the first sign I’ll be illustrating in which I have significant placements.
For a high resolution version of this image, and access to all my other art, please consider backing me on Patreon.