“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
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.
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”
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.
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.
“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
Miss Escapist Art 