A shy little fairy pokes out from behind an equally shy jack-o-lantern on a crisp, bright Samhain. Samhain is the same night as Halloween (and the following day), and is the Celtic New Year. This is part of the Celtic sacred festivals series. I painted this in my typical three-step process that I usually do for art cards. After sketching the image out on hot press watercolor paper, I lay down an overall wash to set a common color for the piece—in this case, orange. Then I block in the main colors, and further refine and shade them in watercolor. After that, I take my quill pen and use sepia or peat brown ink (sepia for this painting) to outline only the general shapes (which is what gives my work an often art nouveau look), and stop when it feels right to me. After the inking, I go in with colored pencils to further refine and sharpen all the details until it looks like a good place to stop!