Beltane, celebrating the beginning of summer
A process post: A series of illustrations inspired by the Celtic wheel of the year, from thumbnail to final artwork
Beltane celebrates the halfway point between Ostara, the Vernal Equinox, and Litha, the Summer Solstice. It takes place on 1 May and is traditionally a time of fire and feasting to welcome the return of the light as the days get longer. The name ‘Beltane’ comes from the Gaelic for ‘fires of Bel’ (a Celtic god) and heralds the beginning of the farming year, a time of hope, growing abundance and community.
Slow Seasons, A Creative Guide to Reconnecting with Nature the Celtic Way,
by Rosie Steer
In this post I want to take you through my process creating the Beltane inspired illustration above, from thumbnail, to sketch, to final artwork. This is an image heavy post, so if you can’t read it in full in this email, click the banner to read it in your browser.
Character sketches
Last year I started drawing folktale inspired characters, I have pages and pages of them in my sketchbook. This little one kept following me around for a while, until a pond full of tadpoles and a chat about ‘the little guys’ in Hayao Miyazaki’s films with a friend gave me an idea for an illustration.
In these thumbnails I’m trying to figure out the composition. I started with the big one at the bottom, but quickly decided I need way more little guys, so I moved the character up to create room for more tadpoles. (How cute that tadpoles also go by ‘polliwogs’. If like me, you’re wondering about the etymology, pol come from the Middle Low German or Middle Dutch pol for "head" and wiglen meaning "to wiggle".)
I ended up with this pencil sketch for the rough composition. Usually at this point I will move on to ProCreate for finetuning, but this time I was feeling brave and decided to dive straight in and paint.
Even though I like the Little One’s face in this painting, I wasn’t super happy with the overall result. The water edge looked messy so I decided, instead of using online reference pics, to go out and to draw from observation instead.
Drawing from observation gave me a good understanding of the tonal values of water close to shore and how reeds are dark at the bottom and go lighter towards the top. Back in the studio, I got rid of the messy water’s edge and replaced it with a sketch of a branch and added the reeds.
I tried another painting and ended up not loving that version either. There is always a point in the process where I slightly despair and consider a career change. By now I know this is part of the creative cycle and I will text my friends that I have, once again, arrived at the ‘I not sure if I’m an illustrator after all’ stage (big shout out to Lilla Turi,
and for being my emotional support cheerleaders).Whenever I’m feeling insecure or stuck in my practice I return to my old love; printmaking. Printmaking is part rules and structure, and part chance. Not being in total control of the process helps me to not overthink and just go for it. My current printmaking crush is linocut, so I transferred my sketch onto an A4 piece of grey hessian backed lino and started carving.
After printing the lino I decided to add colour with gouache and watercolour. This still didn’t feel ‘right’ so I packed up for the day feeling a little frustrated.
The next morning I was looking at my Ostara inspired illustration for clues how to move forward. Adding collage to an illustration helps me think in bold shapes and not fuss so much over the details. I wanted my Beltane illustration to exist in the same world as the Ostara one, so I changed tack again and grabbed my Pritt stick and scissors.
Collage is great for figuring things out on the page. I can move all the loose bits around until I’m happy how it looks. Having all the elements loose on the page gives me the freedom to try several different things before committing to something final, whereas with painting I need to think ahead before putting the colour down. The shape based approach of collage turns the work into an easier puzzle to solve, like an analog ctrl z option.
For the character, I decided on a mix of collage on top of lino to help pull the image together.
After making lots of sketches and trying out quite a few different techniques over the course of several days, I of course ended up full circle, with the same composition I started out with. I complain, but solving the puzzle is a big part of the fun. No highs without lows.
I’m chuffed with the end result. It’s kind of a Dr Frankenstein way of working, with all the different media (collage, lino, paint) but it feels really mine and I’m excited to start the next one. The next illustration in this series will be Litha, the time of the summer solstice.
As always, thanks for being here. Let me know if and how you celebrate the cycles of Celtic wheel of the year in the comments and if you would like to see more of these in depth process posts. See you in the next one!
Much love,
Maris
Links:
Slow Seasons, A Creative Guide to Reconnecting with Nature the Celtic Way by Rosie Steer
Listening to all the time while working:
Ghibli Inspired Atmosphere | Meadow Ambiance & Music
What a neat idea to combine lino and collage! I’m clumsy with it comes to linocuts but collage has been a great way for me personally to paint while also “undo-ing” color choices that might not work ☺️
So lovely, and I love the tadpole translation to head wiggle ! It’s so true! 👏🥰