Author: Miss Escapist

2018, Portraits

Tomi Joutsen of Amorphis

Miss Escapist

“Come before the winter’s gale
before the frost and snow
take what I will give you
Accept my sacrifice”

Amorphis – Sacrifice

Though it might sometimes appear as if Nightwish are the only Finnish band that I listen to, that’s not true. There’s a variety of great bands from Finland that I highly enjoy – and Amorphis is one of them. Their melodic and melancholic music just got better and better through the years and the newly released “Queen of Time” certainly didn’t change my mind on that. On the contrary, it made me want to draw Tomi Joutsen, the singer of Amorphis. I ended up choosing a photo from one of their concerts as a reference as it just seemed to have the right vibe to it. Tomi’s face and hair were done quickly, what took me the longest to draw were his tattoos and the logo on his shirt. All in all, it was a quick portrait, though. A few weeks after finishing it, I decided that the portrait could use some background and so I added a dark shade of grey and black to complete the picture.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 8 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Lina Glasir

2018, Portraits

Marco Hietala of Nightwish

Miss Escapist

“He sets the sails one last time
Saying farewell to the world”

Nightwish – The Islander

After having drawn Nightwish ladies for so long it was just about time to finally give someone else a portrait, too. Nightwish’s very own master of bass, crazy good vocals and stupid jokes: Marco Hietala. Seriously – who doesn’t like Marco? I have always been afraid of drawing him because I know that I suck when it comes to drawing light / white hair. And he has a lot of that. I really wanted to draw him nevertheless and so I decided that I needed to get over that hesitation. I started with drawing Marco’s face as that was a more familiar thing to do before I faced my “fear” and began to work on the hair. I struggled a lot while doing so and though it ended up looking okay in the end, I still wasn’t really satisfied. Because of that it took me some time to regain my motivation for finishing the portrait. In the end, I managed to do so though and completed my work on Marco and the background.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 15 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Markku Hyttinen

2018, Portraits

Maria Brink of In This Moment

Miss Escapist

“I’m stronger than I ever knew
I’m strong because of you”

In This Moment – Roots

As doing a portrait with a ballpoint pen had worked out once already, I decided it was time to give that tool a second try. This time I picked a photo of Maria Brink as a reference – it was about time to draw her, I had never done so before. Most of her outfit is just black so I drew those parts first. Then I went on with drawing the face and after that her hair. Then I did a rough sketch of her crownlike headpiece with the ballpoint pen and added a bit of colour to it with a golden gel marker. Finally, I added a decorative circle in the background and did the writing

Paper size: A4

Materials: ballpoint pen

Time: approx. 3 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Jeremy Saffer

2018, Other Artworks

Mermay 2018

Miss Escapist

Mermay – what the heck is that supposed to be? and wasn’t Inktober already enough? Apparently, it wasn’t as another drawing challenge had caught my eye. It’s basically like Inktober – 31 days, 31 prompts, 31 drawings – but this time they were all about mermaids and not about the medium ink. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do a lot of drawings for Mermay because my calendar was already stuffed for May. But I wanted to give things a try anyway and I had a few very special mermaids in mind. My basic idea was to combine drawing portraits of my favourite musicians and make just give them some fins. And that’s exactly what I did.

Alissa White-Gluz

Arch Enemy

Simone Simons

Epica

Christopher Bowes

Alestorm

Shagrath

Dimmu Borgir

Paper size: A4

Materials: blacklead pencil, chalk pastels

Time: approx. 60 minutes per drawing

2018, Other Artworks

The Shadow Theory

Miss Escapist

“I am all you ever wanted
I’m a new dimension”

Kamelot – Phantom Divine

A few weeks before releasing “The Shadow Theory” Kamelot announced an artwork contest: The person who did the best artwork based on their new album cover would get the chance to meet with the band before one of their shows on their upcoming world tour. Of course, Kamelot didn’t need to tell me that twice and I immediately decided I was in for the challenge. I did not feel like changing lot in the album artwork itself as it was already amazing – instead I just wanted to bring my own artistical style to it. First, I did the basic shading for the background with acrylic colours, then I continued with adding the details to it. I thought it might be a nice contrast to the rest of the painting, to draw the woman in the centre with blacklead pencils instead of using acrylic colours, too. So I started drawing her with my pencils but I soon came to realise that the paper wasn’t really suitable for pencil works. She just didn’t look good at all but I didn’t want to throw the rest of the drawing away and so I came up with an alternative. I got out the paper that I usually use for pencil drawings and started drawing again. After I was done with that, I cut out the figure and glued it on top of my earlier attempt and – voila – done was my entry for the contest. End of the story is that I never heard anything from that contest again – either I didn’t win and they only informed the winner(s) privately. Or they completely forgot about the contest. I don’t know but I like my artwork anyway.

Paper size: A4

Materials: acrylic colours, Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 8 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing: album cover for “The Shadow Theory”

2018, Other Artworks

Dark Chest Of Wonders

Miss Escapist

“Once I had a dream
And this is it”

Nightwish – Dark Chest of Wonders

This painting resulted from a spontaneous outburst of creativity that I had while listening to Nightwish’s “Dark Chest of Wonders”. Suddenly, I had this clear vision in front of my inner eye and I just had to paint it before losing it again. The painting itself is rather simple and so it didn’t take me too much time to finish it. Despite its simplicity, it still contains a lot of small references and hints that I’d like to write down here.

“Follow the pale moonlight” was the key phrase for making a big moon centre of the image. Turning the moon into a gigantic clock that strikes twelve results from the lyrics that say, “One night the clock struck twelve” – that’s a rather obvious one, yes. The refrain which says, “Fly to a dream” made me paint the silhouette of a flying owl (and of course it’s an owl, because it’s Nightwish). On the other hand, that passage also reminded me of Peter Pan and his flight to never-never land. So I felt like you might also see a city silhouette, that perhaps resembles London a bit, in the picture. On the rooftops, i painted the silhouette of a little child, starring up into the night sky, maybe watching the owl flying (“Once there was a child’s dream” – maybe this child is dreaming of flying away like the owl does one day.) “The window open wide” is the reason why I painted a clearly visible and enlightened window into the dark city silhouette. It might easily be the way that the little child used when it “took a step outside” to climb to the rooftop.

Interpreting the lyrics of the song is of course entirely up to you but this is the image that I get when listening the song.

Paper size: A4

Materials: acrylic colours

Time: approx. 3 hours

2018

Meeting Arch Enemy Again

Miss Escapist

As I had managed to finish my Arch Enemy portrait in time, I was 100% ready for the meet & greet with Arch Enemy prior to their concert. There were quite a few “VIPs” this time and we only had a short amount of time with the band. Shortly after we had been escorted into the building, Arch Enemy already entered the room as well. It felt a bit awkward, though, as the band wasn’t really speaking for themselves but had some sort of “moderator” who did most of the talking to us VIPs. He explained the evening’s organisational procedure to us and then asked us to do something crazy to show that we “deserve” this meet & greet. In the end he even asked us to do push-ups. To me it felt like a total waste of time and money as I had wanted time with Arch Enemy, not with a trying-to-be-funny moderator. But that’s only my opinion and the rest of the meet & greet was fine. First, we got the chance to queue for getting a signed poster and for getting our own stuff signed. Once again, some of the band had already seen my drawing on the internet before and once again they complimented me for doing a great job. I quite vividly remember a little chat that I had with Michael about that drawing. When I handed it over to him the first thing he said was “Oooh, it’s you! You know, I’ve already seen this picture on Instagram. It’s great. You’re famous, you know that?” and I was like “Uuum…thanks. But I guess the only famous one here is you.”.  Then he signed as well and I felt very happy with holding the signed artwork in my hands. As soon as the signing session had begun it already ended again and we went over to taking our photos with the band. After that we all had to say bye and leave the venue again (which felt kinda stupid again, as we were allowed to get back into it for the show only a few minutes later – why did we have to get out then? Ah, never mind…). So after entering the venue for the second time I ran to get a spot in the front row (mission completed) and just enjoyed the show for the rest of the evening.

2018, Portraits

Arch Enemy The Second

Miss Escapist

“Always keep on fighting my friend. There’s a reason to believe.”

Arch Enemy – Reason To Believe

Question 1: Have I already drawn Arch Enemy before? Yes. Question 2: Are there a ton of other bands whom I still need to draw? Yes. So the most logical thing would’ve been to just draw any other band, but nope. I ended up drawing Arch Enemy again. But I had a good excuse: I had a VIP ticket for their concert, so I’d be able to get another drawing signed there. A drawing that I didn’t even have yet. But there were still 3 weeks left to draw another band portrait – and that’s exactly what I did. This time I drew Alissa first and especially the details on her shirt took me a while to finish them. I continued drawing on Alissa’s right side, adding Michael and then Sharlee to the picture (I have this bad habit of starting somewhere in the centre or even on the right side of the picture, which leaves me working from right to left. As a right-handed person that’s kinda stupid but I’m always doing it again). Then I added Daniel and Jeff. At first, I left Daniels arm empty because I only had three days left until the concert and I wasn’t sure if I’d manage to finish the entire drawing in time. And I felt like drawing the background was a bit more important at that point as that would be the place where the signatures go. Luckily, I managed to finish the entire drawing in time – WITH Daniels tattoos.

Paper size: A3

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 14 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Katja Kuhl

2017, Other Artworks

Inktober 2017

Miss Escapist

Inktober – what’s that? And why participate? Inktober is a drawing challenge that takes place in – yes, October, you guessed it. The goal is to create 31 ink drawings in 31 days, inspired by an official prompt list (though you can of course choose your own prompts as well). This means that there’s a keyword for each day and you try to come up with a sketch matching that keyword. How you interpret the prompt is up to yourself and you can let your imagination flow. For me, this seemed to be a good opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and try something new. I’m so focussed on drawing (pencil) portraits that I rarely create anything else. Time to change that! I didn’t draw every day, though, as I was quite busy with other things as well. But when I had the time to do so I got out my sketchbook and started creating.

04.10.2017

“underwater”

05.10.2017

“long”

06.10.2017

“sword”

07.10.2017

“shy”

08.10.2017

“crooked”

10.10.2017

“gigantic”

11.10.2017

“run”

13.10.2017

“teeming”

19.10.2017

“cloud”

20.10.2017

“deep”

Paper size: A5

Materials: ballpoint pen (it’s also a sort of ink, I guess)

Time: approx. 30 to 60 minutes per drawing

2017, Portraits

Elize Ryd of Amaranthe

Miss Escapist

“I am the fuel to set you free
I am your destiny”

Amaranthe – Hunger

With October coming up it was time to draw another metal lady – Elize Ryd from Amaranthe. As her birthday is in the middle of October it seemed to be the perfect time to draw a portrait of her. Finding reference photos wasn’t very difficult but choosing one was. When I had finally decided, I started with sketching and shading Elize’s face. I worked from top to bottom in this portrait, starting with the head, then going down to the shoulders, her dress, the arm and finally her corset (or whatever it is). The very last and final thing to draw were all the tiny sequins on her dress, that took me quite some time to draw but also gave the portrait it’s final touch. I left the background empty because I didn’t really know how to fill it at that time but I promised myself that I’d complete the drawing one day.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 11 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing: cover of the album “Amaranthe”