Tag: Ballpoint Pen

2019, Allgemein

The Moonlight Series – Tetiana Shmailiuk

Miss Escapist

“The lane is overcrowded
But the top is just for one”

Jinjer – On The Top

Since Jinjer released a brilliant album called Macro, I felt like it was finally my turn to dedicate a drawing to their incredibly talented front woman Tetiana Shmailiuk. I saw them live multiple times and they just seem to get better each and every time. The cover artwork of Macro gave me the idea to make my Tetiana’s portrait a part of the moonlight series as well (if you look at the cover you’ll know why).

I had a quite clear image in my head of how I wanted things to look but I simply wasn’t able to find a reference picture that came anywhere near it. Until I found a photo by Warren Chua that immediately caught my attention. It’s aesthetic, powerful, rich in detail without being overloaded and just was the perfect fit.

I quickly started regretting my choice, though. The photo displays Tetiana’s tattoos perfectly so I had a lot of work to do with drawing all of them as accurate as possible – with a ballpoint pen and only a few millimetres of space to work on. In the end, the result looked better than expected and I was able to move on to the dress only to be confronted with the next challenge. How on earth do you draw transparent fabrics with a ballpoint pen? I decided to make things a bit easier and draw the fabrics in a non-transparent way (I wouldn’t have known how to do it any other way). The rest of the portrait was done quite quickly, including Tetiana’s face and hair. The accent colour of this drawing was chosen to fit the colour used in the album cover for Macro, so I drew the moon and some details in turquoise.

I’m really happy with how this artwork turned out and I think it might even be my new favourite from the series.

Paper size: A4

Materials: ballpoint pen, Prismacolor pencils

Time: approx. 10 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Warren Chua

2019

The Moonlight Series – Cristina Scabbia

Miss Escapist

“Three nights of Hell
Immortality spell
Light up the skies
Make it through the darkness”

Lacuna Coil – Blood, Tears, Dust

After the massive (and quite unexpected) success of my moonlight-Alissa-ballpoint drawing I felt encouraged enough to give it a second try and draw another metal lady in a similar style. I started a voting on Instagram, asking my followers whether I should draw Charlotte Wessels of Delain or Cristina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil. As the majority voted for Cristina…I drew Cristina (sorry Charlotte, I’ll draw you another time, I promise).

Searching for a reference picture turned out more difficult than I had expected – not because of a lack of suitable references but because there were too many. Eventually, I managed to decide and ended up choosing one of the “simpler” photos. The general layout of the drawing would be identical with the layout that I came up with for Alissa’s portrait so I basically just had to “copy” everything. Apart from the fact that I gave the moon another colour and of course drew Cristina instead of Alissa. I decided to make the moon red this time because the colour seemed most appropriate to me, matching Cristina’s red scar (and also because Lacuna Coil like to use red in their imagery in general). Drawing Cristina herself wasn’t that much of an effort as her outfit is relatively simple and didn’t require too much attention to tiny details.

Paper size: A4

Materials: ballpoint pen, Prismacolor pencils

Time: approx. 5 hours

2019, Portraits

The Moonlight Series – Alissa White-Gluz

Miss Escapist

“Escapist flights and lengthy nights. As some succumb to slumber awakes…”

The Agonist – Birds Elope With The Sun

Those who follow me on on Instagram will already know a majority of the following text but I feel like it’s important to share it here as well. The story behind this drawing is rather important to me and I’ve received a lot of feedback from fellow artists, sharing similar stories with me. Even Alissa herself contacted me about the drawing and the story behind it, so here we go:

Finishing this drawing was a huge challenge for me, more than it should’ve been. In the middle of the drawing process, a person whose opinion I care about very much gave me some not so very positive critique on the drawing. Until that point I was rather satisfied with the artwork but after receiving that crique, I suddenly began to doubt the entire drawing. I started feeling quite bad about it and thought about not finishing it at all – and my insecurity got bigger and bigger. It was dragging me down way more than it should’ve. It took me a few days to overcome my doubts but I’m happy I did. Because: it doesn’t matter what other people say or think about my art, it’s MY art and therefore I have the freedom to draw in whatever style I want to. I don’t need to adjust to people’s opinions and the only thing that really matters is that I’m having fun while drawing and that I’m happy with the result. If others like it as well: great! If they don’t…well, that’s also fine, they don’t need to like it.

Don’t let others tell you that you’re bad at what you’re doing. Who are they to judge what’s right or wrong for you? You’re doing it your way and this makes it a good way. Don’t ever try to do something just to please others or to meet anyone’s expectations. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you should never ask for other people’s opinions or criticism. It can be very helpful. Just don’t let negativity overwhelm you and stay positive.

In the end, I’m super happy with the result and looove how the artwork turned out. As a matter of fact, I like it so much that I think of making an entire series in this style. You probably won’t be seeing part 2 of the series anytime soon as I’ve got other projects that need to be finished first. But let me assure you: it will come and it’ll be this year. I’ll draw Cristina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil (I asked my Instagram followers to decide which metal queen will be next, this was the result, so she’ll join the series as soon as possible).

Paper size: A4

Materials: ballpoint pen, Prismacolor pencils

Time: approx. 6 hours

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

2018, Portraits

Designing Cards

Miss Escapist

Maria Brink

In This Moment

Alissa White-Gluz

Arch Enemy

Floor Jansen

Northward & Nightwish

The idea for turning some of my drawings into card designs was actually born quite a while ago – to be more precisely, after I had drawn Maria Brink. I edited the drawing digitally to get it into a proper symmetrical form and then added a card layout to it. I never properly uploaded the picture, though. Same goes for the Alissa White-Gluz card, I created it a few months later and it also never found its way online. I just never felt like anyone would be interested in these cards as they were basically just an edit of drawings that already existed. As the end of the year was coming closer, I decided to give it a try and uploaded my first card design – and got an overwhelmingly positive response. So I felt encourage to upload the second card as well and even create a third card right away – Floor Jansen. I used the Northward drawing that I had done before for the edit. To my surprise, when I opened Instagram again after uploading that card, the first thing that I saw was my work – on Floor Jansen’s page. She seemed to have stumbled upon it and even liked it enough to repost it on her profile. Needless to say that I was rather speechless about this and felt very honoured.

Materials: GIMP, Autodesk Sketchbook

Time: approx. 5 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing were taken by: Jeremy Saffer (Maria Brink), Tim Tronckoe (Alissa White-Gluz), Northward album cover (Floor Jansen)

2018, Portraits

Northward

Miss Escapist

“Don’t turn away
Mirrors never lie”

Northward – Storm in a Glass

As a big fan of Floor Jansen, I also follow all her projects aside from Nightwish. One of those projects is “Northward” where she created some nice hard rock together with Jorn Viggo Lofstad. I liked the music even more than I had expected myself to do and on a grey and rainy afternoon (while listening to Northward, of course) the beginning of this drawing was made. I started with a rough pencil sketch and then used a ballpoint pen for the rest of the drawing. I drew Floor first, followed by Viggo. In the beginning I didn’t really like the drawing but I kept on working on it and added details and shadings where necessary. Since my last ballpoint pen portrait, I had definitely managed to improve my skills and in the end the shading turned out to be quite smooth (at least for a ballpoint pen). I finished the portrait during my lunch break at university the next day by adding the trees. The drawing was quite successful after uploading it to social media, Northward saw and reposted it on all of their social media channels and I even had a private chat about that drawing with whomever is managing the Northward Instagram account

Paper size: A4

Materials: ballpoint pen

Time: approx. 9 hours

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

2018, Portraits

Floor + Alissa = Floorlissa ?

Miss Escapist

“One for all
All for one
We are strong
We are one”

Arch Enemy – Nemesis

The idea for this portrait was actually suggested to me by one of my Instagram followers and I liked it so much that I just had to draw it immediately. That idea was to merge the faces of Floor Jansen and Alissa White-Gluz in one portrait. I spent quite some time searching for good reference photos as the angles of the pictures had to be the same so that I could do a proper face merge. Luckily, I found two pictures that went together perfectly and was able to start drawing. At first, I wanted to do a regular pencil portrait but then I changed my mind and went with a ballpoint pen instead. I started off with Alissa’s half and then went over to drawing Floor. During the process I always had to cover the other half of the face because it was way too confusing to see a completely different face there. I tended to bring trademarks of Alissa’s face into Floor’s and the other way around so covering was the best that I could do. The first time that I had a closer look at the entire face merge wasn’t before the portrait was finished and I think it looks cool and confusing at the same time.

Paper size: A4

Materials: ballpoint pen

Time: approx. 8 hours

Reference photos used for the drawing were taken by: Fradellafra Fotografie (Alissa’s photo) & Steve Brown (Floor’s photo)

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

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

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