Tag: Illustration

2019, Other Artworks

United Metal Minds

Miss Escapist

“Open your mind
Then you will be
Balanced and free”

Epica – Beyond The Matrix

Shortly after Simone’s birthday portrait I decided to give digital drawing another chance – and created an illustration for Mark Jansen’s “United Metal Minds” project.  When I started drawing, I didn’t have any concept for how I wanted the picture to look like. I started off by colouring the background and drawing the United Metal Minds logo in the centre. After that I continued with adding the silhouette of a woman meditating, then I drew the moon and earth in opposite corners of the picture. Last but not least, I added a sort of “mandala” frame to the image.

At first, it was rather difficult for me to come up with ideas for the illustration as I didn’t have any music to refer to and only a rather vague topic but I tried to make the best out of it.

A few explanations on the artwork itself: the logo in the center isn’t my own design, it depicts a symbol called “Metatron’s Cube” – a reference for energy, motivation and focus. The silhouette of the meditating woman is supposed to be a symbol for the mind and the ability to focus on it.
The cube symbol resembles the “Flower of Life” symbol. If you look closely at the woman’s hands you can see a DNA strand just above – as a symbol for life and its origin. I was trying to connect two things with the used symbolism – spirituality (=meditation) and science (=DNA strand) – as I think both can strongly define your view on the world. The moon and earth symbolise connection, interaction and also life. The frame, once again, is a mandala to adapt to Metraton’s Cube in the centre of the illustration.

Materials: Autodesk Sketchbook

Time: approx. 8 hours

2018, Other Artworks

Occamy

Miss Escapist

“Hey, Mr English guy! I think your egg is hatching.”

Jacob Kowaslki – Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them

When I’m not too busy with being a metalhead, I like to spend my time in the Potterverse as well. And with the new Fantastic Beasts movie coming up, doing a little Occamy painting was just the right thing to do. I mainly started this drawing because I wanted to practise working with watercolours for a change. I rarely use that medium and it was nice to come back to it. I started with painting the background and working out the Hogwarts silhouette. After the background had dried, I was able to start sketching the Occamy. I mainly used blue and purple colours for painting the Occamy and added some metallic highlights on top. For outlining the Occamy I used a black fine liner. As a final touch (that wasn’t originally planned), I drew the deathly hallows symbol that’s partially formed by the Occamy’s tail.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell watercolours

Time: approx. 2 hours

2018, Other Artworks

The Shadow Theory

Miss Escapist

“I am all you ever wanted
I’m a new dimension”

Kamelot – Phantom Divine

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”

2018, Other Artworks

Dark Chest Of Wonders

Miss Escapist

“Once I had a dream
And this is it”

Nightwish – Dark Chest of Wonders

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.

Paper size: A4

Materials: acrylic colours

Time: approx. 3 hours

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, Other Artworks

Winter Is Coming

Miss Escapist

“Winter is coming.”

Everyone in Game of Thrones

Always

With the seventh season of Game of Thrones coming up it just seemed natural to dedicate an artwork to what’s probably my favourite series. As I couldn’t decide for a character and didn’t have that much time anyways, I went with the logo of house Stark instead. At first, I didn’t intend to draw anything more than the wolf. But once I was done with that, the picture seemed quite boring to me and so I added some black background, the “Winter Is Coming” plus a bit of ice and snowflakes. Much better now.

Paper size: A4

Materials: acrylic colours, PITT Artist Pens

Time: approx. 1 hour

2017, Other Artworks

It’s Epica – Again

Miss Escapist

“We challenge illusions
Created by us all”

Epica – The Holographic Principle

A few days after finishing Simone Simons portrait I bought myself a VIP ticket for one of Epica’s shows that I already had a ticket for. There was only one month left until the show and the Meet & Greet that I had access to through the VIP ticket. I knew that I’d definitely take the portrait of Simone with me to show it to her and to get it signed. As there was still time, why not do another fanart, that wasn’t focussed on a single band member but rather on their latest album “The Holographic Principle”. As I liked the album cover a lot and it wasn’t too complicated, I decided to paint it on my last canvas. After making the usual rough sketch I started with a purple base layer and then added some highlights and shadows. After that I worked out the face. This time painting the black areas black was the last thing I did (Yes, I’ve learned a thing or two from my Delain painting.). For adding all the colourful geometric details I used a very fine brush and carefully painted them on top. Last step: a lot of stars and a few silver highlights.

I managed to finish the painting two weeks before the concert and was all ready to go and get it signed.

Paper size: 30 x 45 canvas

Materials: acrylic colours

Time: approx. 7 hours

Reference picture used for the painting: cover of the album “The Holographic Principle”

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