Category: Portraits

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”

2017, Portraits

Arch Enemy

Miss Escapist

“Feel the strength rise from within. If you really want it the world is yours.”

Arch Enemy – The World Is Yours

A few weeks before the release of “Will To Power” Arch Enemy announced a signing session in my home town. I was super excited about this because I saw a chance to show Alissa the drawings that I had made of her in person. And to get them signed, of course. However, I felt like it would’ve been a bit unfair to show up with a bunch of Alissa drawings without having a single drawing dedicated to the entire band. I mean, I love Alissa but I also love Arch Enemy as a band and I’m really into their music. So they deserved a band portrait anyways. I picked a picture from a promo shoot for their upcoming album as a reference and started drawing. First, I drew Michael, followed my Jeff. While Michael was done quite quickly, drawing Jeff consumed a bit more time (I’m not good when it comes to drawing light hair). I continued working on Sharlee and Daniel (whose tattoos took me ages and required a lot of patience) before I finally started drawing the lady in the centre. Luckily, I already had a lot of experience with drawing Alissa and so I didn’t struggle with depicting her. As a final touch, I decided to draw the background as well. After that, I was done with the portrait and all ready to get it signed by Arch Enemy.

Paper size: A3

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 15 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing has been taken by: Katja Kuhl

2017, Portraits

An Alissa Ballpoint Pen Experiment

Miss Escapist

“So many times its a matter of degrees from being up on your luck to down on your knees.”

Arch Enemy – War Eternal

For Alissa’s birthday, I spontaneously decided to draw another portrait of her. If there hadn’t been one major obstacle: I didn’t have any pencils with me! (I was working abroad at that time and hadn’t packed any pencils – I mean, I was there for work) Buying a new set of pencils just for one drawing seemed a bit over the top for me, so I took a different route. I had a cheap ballpoint pen with me and I started thinking “Maybe you can pull it off with this”. And so I challenged myself to try drawing an entire portrait using nothing but this one ballpoint pen. In the beginning it felt very strange but I quickly got used to my new drawing tool. Drawing the outlines and the darker areas wasn’t too difficult but getting lighter shadows was another thing. The pen reacted extremely sensitive to even the slightest adjustment of pressure, so I had to be extremely careful. But there was also a great advantage to drawing with a ballpoint pen: the portrait was done in absolutely no time. And it actually looks pretty cool, I like the edginess that this drawing style creates. I think it goes really well with Alissa’s outfit and style in this one.

Paper size: A4

Materials: ballpoint pen

Time: approx. 3 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Tim Tronckoe

2017, Portraits

Alissa White-Gluz – But This Time In Colour

Miss Escapist

“No progress comes from pleasure. We smile in ignorance and learn in pain”

Arch Enemy – Avalanche

Who would be qualified better for another coloured portrait than the one and only Alissa White-Gluz? And as I had a pencil in just the right shade of blue, it wasn’t that much of a question anymore. I had a picture of her in mind that I had wanted to draw for quite a long time, so I jumped right into it. First, I did a rough sketch with a blacklead pencil and then I started to fill everything with colours. Shading the skin went a bit better this time and when I was done with it I moved on to the part I had been looking forward to the most: her hair, of course. I wanted it to be the catchy highlight of the portrait and i put a lot of effort into getting the colours and the texture right. The last thing to draw was her shirt, which didn’t consume a lot of time as it just consists of black and white. I ended up very happy with the result and when I uploaded it to Instagram I even received a comment by Alissa herself, telling me that the drawing looks awesome and that she thinks I’m really talented. Yay. đŸ™‚

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell coloured pencils

Time: approx. 8 hours

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

2017, Portraits

Maisie Williams

Miss Escapist

“I’m going to kill the queen.”

Arya Stark (Game of Thrones)

What’s better than one Game of Thrones inspired artwork? Two Game of Thrones inspired artworks! Once again, I had difficulties deciding, so I ended up picking a character randomly – Arya Stark. I wasn’t really able to find a reference picture of Arya that convinced me, though, so I searched for pictures of Maisie Williams instead. Close enough, I thought. For this portrait I wanted to try something new and draw an entirely coloured portrait. Luckily, I had the right set of colours at hand, so I started drawing immediately. During the drawing process I had some difficulties with shading – I usually draw with very soft pencils and the coloured pencils that I used for this one were a lot harder. I really struggled with getting depth into her face and make the entire thing look three-dimensional. Nevertheless, the result looks kinda like Maisie, so I’ll stop complaining. Apart from the shading I was rather satisfied with how the portrait turned out and decided to do another coloured portrait soon.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell coloured pencils

Time: approx. 8 hours

2016, Portraits

The Project That Took Me Almost Entire 2016 To Finish It…

Miss Escapist

“All that we desire
Is to find our source again
The meaning of life”

Epica – The Quantum Enigma

I couldn’t have chosen a more complicated reference photo for this drawing. I definitely couldn’t have. But I’ve fallen in love with the photo when I saw it for the first time and haven’t been able to get it out of my head ever since. It’s truly a piece of art. So one sunny afternoon in spring I got out my pencils and an A3 sheet of paper and started doing a rough sketch of Simone. The first thing I drew was the corset which already took me a lot of patience, as I had to draw white details on a black background. So I left out everything that had to stay white and shaded the rest. After that I went on with detailing and shading the parts that I had left white before. The legs and the shoe were quite simple to draw and quickly done. I continued with the arms, the face and then the hair. “Great!”, I thought. “Only the background left.”. Only…the background turned out be an absolute suicide mission that drove me totally crazy. I tried to draw every single sheet a true to the original as possible, from positioning to shading to the notes written on them. In fact, I tried to copy every single note 1:1. It took me ages and I almost lost my sanity over it. When I finally finished the drawing, it was already December. I had started in spring. Wow. That one required a lot of patience…

But it was absolutely worth it, I love the drawing so much and I’m really proud of it.

Paper size: A3

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: Forever… (I really can’t tell how many hours I spent on it.)

Reference photo for the drawing has been taken by: Tim Tronckoe

2016, Portraits

Dianne Van Giersbergen

Miss Escapist

“All hear the oceans howling
Voices of the Fallen”

Xandria – Voyage Of The Fallen

When I went to see Powerwolf live last year, Xandria were the opening act. Until that day I had known Xandria but never payed to much attention to them. For me they had always been “just another symphonic metal band” that didn’t stand out in any way. Seeing them live definitely changed my opinion because they were absolutely amazing. Dianne’s stage presence and her incredible voice have proven me wrong. I listened to Xandria’s discography after that concert and I soon came to realise the reason why I had never particularly liked Xandria before: I only liked those songs sung by Dianne. But I liked that ones a looot. So I decided to give Dianne her own portrait. I used a different paper than usual for drawing, a rather rough one with a lot of texture. And if I’ve learned one thing from it it’s that I’ll never do it again. No matter how hard I tried, the shadings always looked a bit weird and I just wasn’t able to make the skin look as smooth as I wanted it to. Also, the perspective is kinda messed up. The hair, on the other hand, turned out quite good and I guess in the end the portrait doesn’t look too bad. At least you can see the parallels to Dianne.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 5 hours

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

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, 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