Creating My Beltaine Drawing: A Journey from Gouache to Digital Art

In my previous post, I talked about my drawing of the Bealtaine fire and how I aimed to capture the spirit of this ancient symbol in a modern and unique way. Today, I want to share with you, my process behind creating this drawing.

This is a short video, a ‘snapshot’ of when I painted the Bealtiane fire using gouache paint.

So, first things first: I started by making three gouache paintings, two of the background and one of the fire. This helped me work out the colours and composition. Then, I scanned them into my laptop to use them as a starting point for my digital drawing.

I played around with the background. I tried going for a realistic(ish) scene with the light from the fire reflectied on the ground. But it reminded me more of Halloween or Samhain, which is a festival 6 months later and represents the end of the light half of the year instead of the start. So very much the opposite of what I intended!!

So I changed the background colour to a bluey-green to give it a lighter feel and a sense of growth and freshness which is more appropriate for this time of year. I also felt that it represents dusk which is when the fire would have been lit, so that worked well.

One of the things I love about the Bealtaine festival is how it acknowledges the thin veil between the otherworld and ours, which I talked about in my previous blog post. So from the start, I wanted to bring a sense of that magic and wonder into the drawing by adding my abstract swirls and patterns to the flames of the fire.

I reflected this pattern in the background to represent the awareness of ‘the other crowd’ being in whispering distance…giving a feeling of if you look close enough you might see something magical.

I was really pleased with the end result! 😊

So now I’m working on creating a colour-in page based on the drawing.

This will be added to other Bealtaine products in my shop such as the digital downloads bundle. Mugs and tote bags will be coming soon.

Anyway, that's just a little peek into my process. I like to think of this as a journey from gouache to digital art, capturing the magic of this ancient festival in a modern and unique way. I hope you found this interesting.

If you have any questions or comments I’d love to hear from you – don’t hesitate to get in touch.