Horoscope Honeys Part 1

I've always wanted to do a pin-up calendar, it's probably the most classic vessel for the pin-up that I can think of. Well I've finally gotten my chance to make one with Gallery Nucleus called Horoscope Honeys. It'll be a 2014 calendar and there will also be an exhibition and release party on June 29th 2013 at Gallery Nucleus.

I thought I'd take you through the process from the very beginning this time. It was my wife's idea to do a horoscope themed calendar, which I thought was a great idea. Since horoscopes are basically personality profiles, I thought it would be great to imbue each pin-up with the personality of each sign and try to come up with a pin-up concept that represents that character instead of doing the typical thing of dressing her up in the superficial trappings of that sign. For instance, I didn't want to dress up Taurus with bull horns on her head or have Pisces riding a couple of giant fish. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I've just seen it done before.

So I started to do a bunch of research and made lists of personality traits, then started to do thumbnails to search for the concept of the piece. I usually had to try to boil it down to one over-arching trait that would make for a clear pin-up idea. For instance Cancer became "the nurturer" and Leo became "the center of attention".

Here are all of my original notes and sketches. In future posts I'll take you through further steps of completion.