Gatekeeper Butterfly

Beautiful Gatekeeper Butterfly illustration by Lotti Brown...

Hand-painted watercolour natural history illustration and hand-drawn and digitised detail create this contemporary and colourful Gatekeeper artwork.

Gatekeeper Butterfly illustration

Buy an art print here...

About the Gatekeeper Butterfly

The Gatekeeper (Pyronia tithonus) is a British butterfly, also found in Ireland and Europe, often known by its alternative name, the Hedge Brown butterfly as it loves to fly around hedgerows. It can also often be seen fluttering around field gateways, hence its name of the Gatekeeper.

The Gatekeeper butterfly loves warm weather and hot, dry summers, and more recent years have seen it expanding northwards. Here in Yorkshire, I think 2024 is the first year I've seen one, although as a child I think I may have known it by its name of Hedge Brown.

The adult butterflies like to feed on the nectar from bramble flowers, ragwort, fleabane, and wild marjoram, all of which you might find in a hedgerow. The caterpillars eat grasses and are active in August and September, hibernate through winter, and emerge again in April and June. The adult Gatekeeper butterflies emerge in July and are usually gone by the end of August.

You can recognise the Gatekeeper butterfly from its distinctive large spot with two white dots on its forewings - 'eyes' to scare predators - also from its pattern of flying...

On more overcast days, the Gatekeeper butterfly will rest on vegetation while on sunny days, it's more active flying from flower to flower in search of nectar. It rests with its beautiful wings open, which is how you can easily identify it from the similar Meadow Brown butterfly, which does not.

The male has extra brown patches on his wings compared to the female Gatekeeper, and fewer spots on the lower/hind wings than the female. He emerges in advance of the female and sets up a territory and flies around actively seeking a female.

The Gatekeeper is not currently considered a threatened species, although Butterfly Conservation note that 2024's Big Butterfly Count saw an 18% drop in Gatekeeper butterflies counted since 2023, and a drop of almost 32% over the past 14 years (figures here) - 2024 has been a poor year in the UK for butterflies and bees all round.

Gatekeeper Butterfly Illustration

I started my design with a watercolour natural history illustration of the Gatekeeper butterfly...

Adding the first layers of paint

I carefully draw out my butterfly in a sketchbook using my 'proportional scale divider' drawing tool to get an accurate depiction. Then I transfer my drawing onto watercolour paper to get my outline and slowly add the watercolour in layers, building up the colour and texture gradually as I add each layer of paint...

Adding a second layer deepens the colour

Adding textures, details, and deepening the colour further

The completed watercolour illustration

Once I've completed the watercolour painting, I scan this into my computer and remove the background so that I can put the butterfly together with other drawn elements of foliage and hand-painted fabric to digitally create the final illustration.

It's fun to combine the different elements and play with colours to come up with a design that can be used as a natural history illustration, artwork, or design for T-shirts and totebags...

Gatekeeper butterfly illustration by Lotti Brown

I aimed for a pretty design of two Gatekeeper butterflies flying around in the sunshine with hedgerow foliage - hopefully it feels like a beautifully sunny day with happy butterflies flitting and dancing in the air.

Where to Buy

If you like my Gatekeeper butterfly illustration, you can get it as an art print, women's T-shirt or tote bag from my store at the links below (worldwide delivery)...

Women's T-shirt (more colours)

T-shirt

Art print (unframed)

Art print

Tote bag (also available in 'natural')

Tote bag

All products are sustainably created from organic cotton and/or recycled cotton and materials with consciousness of reducing waste through the whole manufacturing cycle. Each product will be individually created for you on demand, which also reduces waste.

Buy my Gatekeeper butterfly products and my other recent nature illustration products from my store here...

You can find out where to buy all my different nature art prints and products here and here (scroll down once you click through)...

Where to go next...

You can explore more of my recent butterfly illustrations on this page...

If you like butterflies, you might also like some of my older Celtic butterfly designs here...

Explore all my natural history illustrations here...

Explore all my (older) nature art here...

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What's New Here

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Explore more recent additions to the site here...

Online Nature Journaling Course

Online nature journaling course

If you'd like to explore nature journaling more, please consider joining me for my 'Imperfect Nature Journaling' online course - I've called it this to remind us to nature journal for the process of connecting with nature to feel good and not to put pressure on ourselves to create pretty pages...

It's a series of 20 lessons or exercises that you can do in your own nature journal to help you try out different ideas and techniques to help you get the most out of your nature journaling sessions and understand what style of nature journaling is the best for you personally.

If this sounds like something you might like, you can find out more about the course here...