I recently read „Asinus Aureus“ (The Golden Donkey) by Apuleius, which incorporates the love story of Amor and Psyche. Apart from being an overall very entertaining book, I cherished the small details very much, one of them that it is very rare for Amor to fall in love. So I think it makes sense to read him as demiromantic and demisexual. After all, he only falls in love with Psyche.
For his design, I tried to mostly orient myself on the description in the book, but took some artistic liberties. He’s described as pale, with golden hair and white wings. I kept the golden hair, but figured that it would make sense for his skin to be tan, because he’s constantly flying around. On his shoulder, you can see the burn scar where Psyche once accidentally dripped some hot oil on him.
I styled his wings after the European turtle dove, because of the German idiom where „being like turtle doves“ means being in love. Trying to shade the feathers or even give them that typical greenish shimmer was very difficult. White wings would certainly have been less trouble to paint. Worse than trying to find a good reference picture of the underside of the wings of a turtle dove was learning that these beautiful and adorable animals are threatened by extinction.
Since his job requires him to be able to move as freely as possible, I styled his outfit similar to that of a trapeze artist :)
Happy Pride everybody!
