Author: Miss Escapist

2016, Portraits

Tarja and Anette

Miss Escapist

“The faces of the past keep calling me to come back home, to caress the river with awe”

Nightwish – Rest Calm

When it comes to Nightwish it seems to be people’s favourite activity fight over who is / was the best singer. I usually don’t participate in such debates as I think that every singer brought something unique and valuable into the band. They’re all so very different, why should I even bother comparing them with one another instead of just enjoying their music? With this thought in my head I decided to do a portrait of both, Tarja and Anette, standing right next to each other. Because I wanted to respect both previous singers in the same way. So I searched for reference pictures, got out my pencils and then started drawing. I needed a surprisingly short amount of time to finish drawing both ladies and all that was left to do was shading the background.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 5 hours

2016, Other Artworks

Moonbathers

Miss Escapist

“We’ll let it storm and rain
We’ll be the hurricane”

Delain – The Hurricane

There are few bands whose album artworks are as appealing to me as Delain. They always manage to capture me with the beautiful illustrations in their booklets as they are super atmospheric. Furthermore, they’ll most likely include a moon and/or a hummingbird and/or my favourite colours. So I was bound to fall in love with this one, of course. And I just had to paint the motive, there was no way around it. Luckily, I still had a canvas lying around so I was able to start right away. I started by drawing a big circle right in the middle and then went on with painting the moon. When the moon was done, I sketched the face and hummingbird silhouettes on top and filled them and the background with a basic layer of black. Now I had to paint some areas red / green which wasn’t as easy as I had imagined it to be. The black background just seemed to absorb every bit of colour that I put onto it. After 8 layers of paint the colours were finally visible and I could continue with making it look like a starry night sky. Therefore, I added fine sprinkles of white paint to the painting. For the stellar hummingbird constellation, I used a fine white gel pen to be able to draw all the lines steadily. I think the result comes quite close to the original, though it of course will never look as perfect. This is one of the artworks that I’d really like to get signed one day, let’s see if I’ll be lucky enough to show it to Delain one day

Paper size: 30 x 30 canvas

Materials: acrylic colours

Time: approx. 6 hours

Reference picture used for the painting: an illustration from the album “Moonbathers”

2015, Other Artworks

Kingdom Animalia

Miss Escapist

“A midnight flight into Covington Woods, a princess and a panther by my side”

Nightwish – Song Of Myself

This drawing is yet another dedication to my Nightwish-madness, only this time it’s not a portrait. The inspiration for this one came from the songs or to be more precisely from the lyrics. There are certain animals that you’ll find in Nightwish lyrics again and again, that have a certain significance. I guess the owl is the most prominent example. But there are also animals that you perhaps haven’t noticed before, animals that are mentioned only a single time and that don’t stick in your memory. I wanted to include them all in my drawing so I went through all my Nightwish albums to see how many animals I’ll be able to find. I noted them all down and counted how many times they appeared in the lyrics or booklet artworks. Then I started drawing an outline of the wolf and the owl and tried to arrange all the other animals into the picture as well. After that was done I started colouring and outlining with Faber Castell Artist Pens and added little splatters of watercolour on top of that.

Paper size: A3

Materials: PITT Artist Pens, watercolour

Time: approx. 3 hours

2015, Portraits

Powerwolf

Miss Escapist

“Stand up all the night and call the fight, let your mind go wild before the light”

Powerwolf – Army Of The Night

After having bought myself a ticket for my very first Powerwolf show it felt just right to do a drawing dedicated to them. Powerwolf are one of my favourite bands and their music gives me a lot of energy so it was just about time to finally draw them. Until now I have only done “single portraits” – I never drew more than one person in the same picture. But for Powerwolf I really wanted to go with entire band instead of just choosing a single member to depict. As an A4 paper appeared to be too small to get all five of the wolves on it I decided to go with A3 paper instead – another challenge, as I wasn’t used to drawing on anything larger than A4. I started drawing the outlines of the entire band and then went on with shading and detailing form left to right, Falk-Maria being the first to draw and Matthew the last. I worked on the drawing for quite a while and as I drew I literally felt and saw the progress that I made. So, when I had reached the right end of the picture after finishing Matthew, I went back to the left side again to re-draw Falk-Maria and Charles. I went back and forth this way a few times until I was finally satisfied with the result. Which was a few days after the concert. I had intended to finish it before but late is better than never. And it was by far my most ambitious project of 2015, so I guess that’s okay.

Paper size: A3

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 30 hours

2015, Other Artworks

Lilacs

Miss Escapist

“My wings are my eyes
I’m seeing the blue skies
I’ll fly, I’ll fly away”

Amberian Dawn – Wings Are My Eyes

Time for another flowery piece of art – a bunch of lilacs. The painting was supposed to be a birthday present for my grandma who loves these flowers. So I got out a canvas and acrylic paint and started doing a base layer of colour for the background. I put a pencil sketch on top of that and then started painting the actual flowers. To get details into the blossoms I used my purple artist pens. When I was finally satisfied with the picture itself I started arranging little decorative butterflies that I had lying around and glued them to the painting. They give a nice little three-dimensional touch to the artwork that you can’t really see on this photo. My grandma was very happy about the painting and she’s still got it hanging on her wall.

Paper size: 30 x 30 canvas

Materials: acrylic colours, PITT Artist Pens, little butterfly figures

Time: approx. 2 hours

2015, Other Artworks

Hummingbird Sketch

Miss Escapist

“We are humming the same tune, goodbye my lullaby”

Delain – Lullaby

Delain and I have one thing in common: our love for hummingbirds. I love these little creatures and Delain seem to like them as well as you can find a hummingbird in almost all of their album artworks. I had just bought myself a few new artist pens and wanted to try them. First, I did a rough sketch of the hummingbird with a pencil, then I started outlining with the new pens. After that I got out my paint brushes and started adding splatters of black acrylic paint all over the picture. Last but not least I corrected a few details with the artist pens again and then I was done.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell PITT Artist Pens

Time: approx. 1 hour

2015, Portraits

Floor Jansen of Nightwish

Miss Escapist

” I do not wish to evade the world, yet I will forever build my own”

Nightwish – My Walden

Motivated by my rather successful attempt of drawing Alissa I felt ready to dedicate a portrait to the flying Dutchwoman Floor Jansen – my favourite singer and the new vocalist of my favourite band Nightwish. The time to do so felt right as Nightwish were just about to release “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” – their first studio album featuring Floor. First, I wanted to pick one of the promo shoots as a reference photo but then I ended up doing a rather simple face portrait. Especially drawing the skin went quite well and I got a really smooth result. I also invested a lot of time into drawing the hair because I didn’t want it to look as unrealistic as all of the hair mess that I had drawn for previous portraits. I messed up another thing, though, and that’s the eyeliner as it looks way too dark and harsh. But apart from that I was quite happy with the finished portrait and I felt like I’ve really made some progress since my first drawing.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 7 hours

2015, Other Artworks

A Colourful Experiment

Miss Escapist

“Open your eyes
See through the disguise”

Disturbed – Open Your Eyes

There are those days where I feel the urge to just randomly scribble around without thinking about what I’m doing. Just letting the creativity flow. This artwork came to life on such a day. I was roughly sketching an eye and sent a picture of it to a friend who immediately told me that he’d like to have it. I didn’t mind giving it away as I had only spent 10 minutes on drawing the eye. Nevertheless, the picture felt quite empty and lifeless to me and I didn’t want to leave it in that state. I spontaneously got out my watercolours and started splashing around – and to my own surprise I ended up liking the result (and my friend also liked it). Actually, I had a lot of fun while creating this as it felt so free and easy going.

Paper size: A3

Materials: charcoal, Faber Castell watercolours

Time: approx. 30 minutes

2014, Other Artworks

Moonlight Sailor

Miss Escapist

“Moonlight falling over me
Sail on where the shadows hide”

Kamelot – Moonlight

This rather simple painting came to live in December 2014 when I still needed a Christmas present for a friend. I was listening to music while I thought about what to draw – and of course got my inspiration from it. The artwork is mainly inspired by two things: Nightwish album “Oceanborn” and Kamelot’s song “Moonlight”. I had a quite clear vision in my mind how the picture was supposed to look like and got out my watercolours to bring it to life on paper. First I painted the moon, then I went on with the background. As a final touch I added the ship – which I drew with a fineliner to not mess up the details.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell watercolours, Faber Castell fineliner

Time: approx. 2 hours

2014, Portraits

Alissa White-Gluz of Arch Enemy

Miss Escapist

“There’s something inside me
And I know it’s good, I’m not evil”

Arch Enemy – You Will Know My Name

Though still traumatized by my Tarja portrait, I decided it was time for another attempt of drawing faces. It wasn’t so very hard too choose a reference as I had wanted to draw Alissa White-Gluz for quite a long time. Not only because I really enjoy her music but also because she makes such a good portrait reference. I mean…are there any bad pictures of her? I ended up choosing a photo where she looked directly into the camera so I wouldn’t have to deal with akward perspectives again. And it turned out to be the right decission as I had way less difficulties when drawing. Even though I drew most of it on the train! After finishing the portrait I spontaneously added a bit of colour to the hair. There’s just no Alissa without colourful hair.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead and coloured pencils

Time: approx. 5 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Patric Ullaeus