Star Signs Experimental Piece

I want this piece to be personal to me, yet still capture the ideas of the occult and star signs. To start with I thought of different ideas which relate to the star signs.

The list I thought of was:

- Sky

- Stars

- Water Bearer

- Wind

- Night Sky

With these ideas I decided on creating a night scape, which was then related to the idea of Air and Aquarius.

My first step was to create the background.

I started with a dark blue background, and added in an inner shadow via photoshop. This was just to get an idea of how I could proceed with the idea.

I next decided to make the background an even darker blue as I felt that black would be too dark, but this blue wasn't quite dark enough.

My next step was to introduce the constellation into the 'Night Sky'. I used the previously posted basic form of the constellation and changed its colours to white, this was the start of creating the stars, however at this point they were just basic circles, so they didn't really seem powerful or dramatic like I envisioned this piece to be.

My next step was to make the stars actually look like stars.

To do this I played around with a layer effect called 'Outer Glow'. This worked out quite nicely as the stars finally stood out and glowed rather than just being simple circles.

Next I made some small adjustments, again darkening the background a bit, and also making the inner shadow more prominent. I also made the constellation slight more central.

Now that I had the constellation and background, I needed to make the ideas of Air and Aquarius known. I first decided on adding the idea of aquarius to the piece. I began by looking at how other people envisioned Aquarius online. What I previously knew about Aquarius before the research was that it was known as the 'Water Bearer', aquarius was either presented as a male or female pouring water from a jug, normally the latter. For this I decided I would need to make my own image of someone pouring a jug of water. 

Since I was unable to do this at the time I decided to work on the more personal side by using one of the quotes I had found previously. I decided on using the first quote I had found:

"Creativity flows through the veins of individuals with the Aquarius sign."

I found a font called 'Fairy Dust' which I had used a few years ago, however I felt that it really worked for the flowing creation that the quote talked about.

I decided that the 'FairyDust' font may not have been the best choice. I started playing around with other fonts to see which one I felt worked best.

This one makes uses of a font called 'Beyond Wonderland'. I feel that this is a better suited font for this piece.

This font is known as 'Windlass' which although it looks nice, I didn't feel that it was as interesting as the previous two fonts.

In the end I decided on using the 'Beyond Wonderland' font, however I felt that the text needed resizing. I also decided on adding in a drop shadow to the text to see what effect it would have.

I found that the smaller font size and drop shadow worked well for the piece, however I still felt that although I knew that the piece would have the hands added in later, it still needed something more. From this I decided on adding another symbol used to represent Aquarius.

I decided on using the wave sign of Aquarius and having it faded in the background.

With this I had planned on having the jug pourer in the top left corner, however this may change. For now I feel that adding an element of Air to it would make it further relate to the theme.