Tag: Moon

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, 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

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”

2014, Other Artworks

Moonlight Sailor

Miss Escapist

“Moonlight falling over me
Sail on where the shadows hide”

Kamelot – Moonlight

This rather simple painting came to live in December 2014 when I still needed a Christmas present for a friend. I was listening to music while I thought about what to draw – and of course got my inspiration from it. The artwork is mainly inspired by two things: Nightwish album “Oceanborn” and Kamelot’s song “Moonlight”. I had a quite clear vision in my mind how the picture was supposed to look like and got out my watercolours to bring it to life on paper. First I painted the moon, then I went on with the background. As a final touch I added the ship – which I drew with a fineliner to not mess up the details.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell watercolours, Faber Castell fineliner

Time: approx. 2 hours