Tag: Floor Jansen

2018, Portraits

Floor Jansen of Nightwish (The Wacken Edition)

Miss Escapist

“Deep into a dying day I took a step outside an innocent heart “

Nightwish – Wish I Had An Angel

This is one of the drawing projects that is most dear to me as it captures a moment from my very first Nightwish concert – at the legendary Wacken Open Air in summer 2018. I was there, standing in the front row (I had waited there for Nightwish to play for about 11 hours straight). I was a Nightwish fan for more than 10 years at that time, so it was kind of a BIG moment for me. I really wanted to dedicate a drawing to this special show and searched for a reference picture that I wanted to use for months. I finally ended up with drawing this scene. In my first attempt I tried doing a coloured portrait but I kinda messed things up and decided to stick with the things I knew for that drawing as I really wanted it to be perfect. Fortunately, my seccond attempt went way better and I made good progress, though I still needed a lot of patience. Especially Floor’s corset took me ages to finish as there are so many little details I had to pay attention to. Once I had finished the portrait itself the background wasn’t much of a problem anymore and I finally held the finished drawing in my hands. I’d really love to show it to Floor in person one day and I hope that I’ll get the chance to do so – sooner or later.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 20 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Natalia Kempin

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)

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