How to Draw Halos for Religious Art

Have you ever wanted to draw a saint, an angel or a Madonna in the style of beautiful old religious icons? Or tried to find a way to show that particular man with a flute in your drawing is Krishna? Here are several easy and dramatic ways to show the holiness of the religious figures in your realistic art as well as cartoons.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Color set of felt tip pens or brush pens.
• Fine point disposable technical pen or technical pen with black India ink
• Drawing paper or sketchbook
• Pencil
• Kneaded eraser
• Compass
• Optional gold or silver metallic pen to draw haloes.
• Optional, computer and color printer

1. Dueling Haloes, two easy halo styles and three The easiest halo to draw is a cartoon halo. Sketch your cartoon figures in pencil and correct them at the pencil stage with the kneaded eraser, then ink with felt tips or brush pens. The character on the right looks smug, the character on the left a bit annoyed and jealous.
   
   That's because the character on the right has a fancier shiny halo. The easiest halo to draw for a cartoon character is a simple flattened oval. It can be attached to the character by a stick coming down from it and a headband if it depicts a costume halo. The one on the right is drawn three dimensionally, has two outlines and some metallic effect shading. Three different types of sparkle effects are drawn, the easiest on the left side character and two others on the right side character. A single sparkle on any shiny object makes it pop in a cartoon, her teeth have that sparkle too. Simple rays coming out can also be shown by flicking "U" or "V" shapes with a pen stroke. I didn't even pencil those in, just the characters. These haloes are drawn on the fly.
   
   Practice these haloes on doodle pads, memos, backs of envelopes, anywhere you want to scribble when you're bored on hold. The best time for cartooning practice is when you're cooling your heels. Make up characters for cartoons and come up with gags whenever a drawing makes you laugh. Cartooning is its own art form, and these two halo styles are the best for getting across a saint, Jesus, angels or religious figures in a joke. These haloes will do for the standard "angel and devil" conscience figures on characters' shoulders in cartoons.
   
   Outlining the halo inside and outside lets you color it in yellow. Color the cartoon image if you like, but this drawing makes sense in black and white.
2. Madonna and Child before halo is drawn, showing space for haloes Traditional religious art is usually painted in oils or tempera. Modern pan opaque watercolors produce effects very similar to medieval tempera and casein painting. They are an affordable alternative that is very good for miniatures. You can also use metallic gold gouache and a fine point brush to add haloes to transparent watercolor paintings, color printouts, ink paintings and greeting cards. A fine point metallic pen will work too, but the gold metallic paint gives finer detail in my experience.
   
   Now we need someone to put a halo on. Copying ancient art doesn't violate copyright, so you can scan and print out saints or Madonnas from religious art over a century old to work around.
   
   Cut out the figure from a copy of the digital image using an image manipulation program (a free one is linked in Resources at the bottom) and print out just the figure on your drawing paper. Fill the background with a dark color if you're going to use metallic paint or pens. Or copy my Madonna and Child sketch in pencil and ink with brush pens.
   
   You can use a color printout of any figure in a historical painting that doesn't already have a halo, or even print out a webcam shot of yourself or a friend. The object is to have a reasonably realistic person or persons to halo with the gold or silver paint.
   
   Leave plenty of room around the drawing if you copy this one, especially the Madonna's head. My set of brush pens doesn't have a light peach color for shading faces, or a light pink, so I outlined facial features in medium-light brown and left it white to imply a pale flesh tone. If you have a pale peach pen, you can color in the faces in light peach. The baby's eyes are shut, he's sleeping. The style of features in this drawing is very medieval, similar to some ancient European bibles.
   
   White is easy to imply with blue shadows and outlines, as long as it's not filled in so heavily it's obviously blue. White outlined with blue looks white because shadows on white are bluish. White outlined with brown reads as pale skin tone because shadows on skin look brown. I used a 24 color set of Pitt Artist Pens, brush pens with permanent colored India ink, but you can use watercolor brush pens available anywhere. I like the small points on the Pitt pens and their permanence.
3. Halo drawn in gold radiating lines, full body aura Developing this drawing a little more, a darker blue to shadow her blue veil helps leave blue highlights where light strikes it. A dramatic way to depict a halo is to leave a glow around the entire figure. So let's sketch in a golden aura around the Madonna and child, in strokes that radiate out from them but do not actually touch them.
   
   Start the strokes from the outside and flick toward the figures, being careful not to go too far. The first layer of golden strokes looks like a glow even on a white background. This style of halo is very common on some South American religious art, but can also be found on some European religious art.
   
   Like our smug cartoon, this drawing could have several types of haloes simultaneously. Sometimes that can work artistically, but most of the time it's better to just choose one style and keep it consistent.
4. Simple Italian style circular haloes, narrow line. Often rendered in gold metal paint. The Italian Renaissance Halo is often a gold circle directly behind the head of the saint or holy person. Let's draw more figures for this one. Sometimes it's tilted like a hat, the forerunner of our cartoon halo floating over the top of the head. It looks a little better drawn flat, behind the head, centered at eye level. The child's halo will vanish behind the mother in this version.
   
   Use the compass to draw the circles. The simplest version of this is just partial circle arcs drawn very narrow, and often painted in thin lines of gold or laid onto a painting with gold leafing. Gold is expensive, so the fine line gold halo approach still got the idea of majesty and wonder across without bankrupting the church. You can get this effect with a gold metallic pen, metallic gold opaque watercolor or a metallic light gold acrylic paint.
   
   If the halo seems too small, draw it again larger from the same starting point. I put the compass point on the inner corner of the child's right side eye and the inner corner of the mother's left side eye (as we look at them). Always use the same eye for reference if doing concentric circles. I left them because in some variations you can use multiple narrow gold lines or multiple bands of fancy patterns on a circle.
   
   Draw two concentric lines, the inner one will be used in the later stage. Haloes cross behind people. Otherwise the Madonna's face would be covered by the child's halo. Her halo can cross his without losing the effect.
5. Madonna and Child with Renaissance style haloes Now let's get a little fancier. The inner circles are a guideline not to go in too far, but rather than filling in the entire area with filigree pattern gold, let's just do some fancy patterns inward from the narrow gold line haloes. Fancy patterning on miniatures is easy. Small repeating strokes or tiny dots placed in a repeating pattern looks very elegant and elaborate. The fancywork could be carried in so far that it reaches the figures and goes behind them -- but there is a logistic problem with this design because two holy figures are so close their haloes intersect. One is going to have to go in front of the other.
   
   We can keep the pattern simple enough with three dots placed at intervals so that the intersection still works and looks good. Place dots in pairs at intervals working around the halo. Place a third dot between them and a little inward to make the pattern. Erase the extra circles, they weren't needed after all.
   
   Or maybe they are. What if the inner corona of the fancy halo was just the dots, without the solid gold line? That might look good.
   
   You can become much more elaborate than this with Renaissance style haloes. Baroque art sometimes featured them too. Keep the purpose of your art in mind. Overdoing the decoration may create a sense of religious splendor, or it may seem gaudy and overdone. Let's see how this design looks painted in opaque paints, using gold metallic paint for the haloes.
   
   By using fine point brush pens to design with, you've practiced the strokes needed to paint the figures and the haloes with something that handles just like a brush with metallic paint. Now enjoy turning your most self-righteous relative into a saint on a family-photo Christmas card, or create a beautiful religious icon of any holy person you hold sacred.

Tips & Warnings

• Try copying early medieval drawings with outlines before attempting to copy Italian Renaissance paintings. It's much easier to trace figures with outlines.
• When drawing fancy Renaissance haloes, make up your own designs of dots and dashes. Any small pattern that repeats, like little crosses or fleur-de-lis or anything, can be used to decorate a Renaissance style halo.
• Daydream and doodle whenever you're bored. You'll become a better artist before you even realize it! Copy any really good doodle and draw it larger for a serious artwork.
• To become a serious cartoonist, just be funny. It doesn't matter whether you draw well or badly as long as your style is consistent and your gags are funny. If someone can tell what you drew, you are doing it well enough. Drawing realistically helps, but is not necessary compared to good gags.
• Decorate simple haloes on cards and holiday decorations by painting them with glue or acrylic medium and shaking glitter onto it while it's wet.
• When using metallic pens on anything, test them on a sample before ruining the finished project. Metallic pens have solvent based ink that carries metal flakes and the solvent may dissolve photo surfaces, printout ink or the surface of a painting. Acrylic gold paint and metallic gold opaque watercolor do not have this problem except on surfaces that respond badly to water.