Tag: pencildrawing

2020

Lauren Hart of Once Human & Kamelot

Miss Escapist

“I’m living in a vacuum,
I’m falling to the core.”

Kamelot – Mindfall Remedy

It’s probably not a secret that I’m into Kamelot, especially into their latest record The Shadow Theory. I’ve been a massive fan of the album since its release in 2018. After having drawn the album cover as well as a portrait of lead singer Tommy Karevik, I felt like dedicating another drawing to their amazing guest vocalist Lauren Hart (also known from Once Human). I immediately knew which photo I’d base my drawing on as I had already saved an incredible photo by Nat Enemde for that purpose a long time ago. So I was able to start sketching right away. After having done a rough outline, I started with drawing Lauren’s face, continuing with her shirt and then the hair (which probably took me the longest to finish, with all that wind blowing through her hair, giving it a beautifully dynamic but also difficult to recreate look). The background was done quite quickly and as a final touch I added some more shadings, trying to make Lauren’s face look well defined and three-dimensional while keeping everything soft and smooth at the same time.

I’m quite surprised by how fast I was able to pull this off, to be honest – I started drawing on Monday afternoon, didn’t draw on Tuesday, continued on Wednesday afternoon and finished it a few hours later. Not that I’d complain… 😀

Also, I’m very happy about the fact that Lauren herself saw the drawing (progress) on Instagram and gave me some positive feedback as well as shared my work. I’m always super grateful when things like that happen.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils, Rotring Tikky mechanical pencils

Time: approx. 8 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing: Nat Enemde

2019, Allgemein

Lacuna Coil and how I met them…

Miss Escapist

Drawing Lacuna Coil as well as visiting one of their concerts was a veeery spontaneous idea. I had known they’d come to Hamburg together with Eluveitie for quite a while. But I told myself I wouldn’t go because the date was in the middle of a very busy uni semester for me. And uni is more important, right? Well, long story short: a few weeks before the actual concert I kinda lost my discipline, bought a ticket for the show and a VIP upgrade on top of that.

Because I would’ve hated to show up without having a drawing to sign for the entire band, I had to change that. So two weeks prior to the show I started searching for reference pictures of the band and ended up designing a layout that was very similar to the Powerwolf portrait I had done in 2018. After I was satisfied with the overall layout and the reference pictures, I was able to start drawing. I did most of the drawing work at uni, in my breaks between the lectures. Had I only drawn at home, I wouldn’t have been able to finish within two weeks time. I managed to finish four days before the show, so everything went well.

On the 21st of December, it was finally the time to meet the guys and lady of Lacuna Coil and show them what I had drawn (most of them had already seen the drawing online because I uploaded it to Instagram). I also took the two drawings I had of Cristina with me to get them signed as well. Of course I arrived at the venue way too early – as always. When it was finally time to go inside and meet Lacuna Coil, I got really excited (no matter how often I get to meet a band and get to show them my drawings, the excitement never goes away). We were quite a bunch of people at the meet & greet and our meet & greet location was in a rather small room as the Eluveitie meet & greet required the bigger room. The light was also quite bad which bothered me more than everything else because this way you couldn’t properly see my drawings. But oh well, you can’t have it all, I guess.

When it was my turn to say hi and to get my stuff signed, the band immediately recognised me. We had a nice little chat about how they had been following the drawing process of the band portrait online and about how cool they found my work (of course I’m always happy and flattered when the depicted person compliments my work). I got the drawing signed by all of them, got my two Cristina portraits signed by her separately as well and received a hug from Maki on top (he and I had been chatting about the drawing a bit before the show already). After the signing session we continued with the photo session (once again with bad light). And then the meet & greet was over, as quickly as it had begun. I grabbed my stuff and went to the concert hall where I was lucky enough to still make it to the front row despite all the Eluveitie VIPs that were already occupying the barrier.

The rest of the evening, I got to enjoy a really nice gig and met a bunch of lovely people. Infected Rain did a nice little opening show, Lacuna Coil played a great set (and Maki gave me one of his picks). The headliner – Eluveitie – didn’t disappoint me either as their concert was great (and I received another souvenir, a drumstick from Alan).

2019

Tommy Karevik of Kamelot

Miss Escapist

“We keep blindly moving
along the same old path”

Kamelot – Burns To Embrace

With Tommy Karevik’s birthday coming closer and the fact that I had a few hours to spare, I decided to give this young man his own portrait. I had been thinking about drawing him for a really long time but never found a reference photo that felt “right” to me – until I stumbled upon a lovely live photo that had been taken somewhere during Kamelot’s Shadow Theory tour. Instead of just drawing Tommy right away, I decided to go a step further and film the entire process once again. So I set up my camera and everything before I started drawing.

(Unfortunately, I didn’t have the opportunity to draw in full daylight all the time so you can see the lights change during the process video. Also, I had to remove the camera a few times to re-charge the battery so there are sliiight changes in positioning that you might be able to see when watching the video.)

I’m gonna spare you all the waffle about how I did the drawing this time because you can see so for yourself on YouTube if you’re interested:

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils, Rotring Tikky mechanical pencils

Time: approx. 8 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Les Puchala Photography

2019, Portraits

Redrawing Tarja

Miss Escapist

“Promises mean everything
Life won’t look back for you”

Tarja – Dead Promises

I’ve been actively drawing for about five years now. This felt like a good time to make a cut, take a step back and look at what I’ve achieved in those five years. I knew that I’ve made quite some progress when it comes to my drawing skills – I’m having way less trouble with drawing nasty details, especially hair, and  overall the results just look better than they did when I started. But I was curious on what would happen if I drew one of my old portraits with the skills that I have nowadays. So I decided to do a redraw.

Back in 2014, Tuomas and Tarja of Nightwish were the first portraits I ever drew. As I had just done a new Tuomas portrait, it was clearly Tarja’s turn now. Also, August seemed like a fiiting time to pull off this redraw-project: Tarja’s birthday is in the middle of August and also she’s close to releasing a new album (tomorrow, as a matter of fact).

No need to search for a refrence picture this time, as I’d be using exactly the same refrence as five years ago. So I jumped right into it and started by doing a rough outline sketch. After that, I began working on the face which I was able to finish quite quickly. This time, the kinda “weird” angle of her face didn’t cause me as much trouble as it did the first time. Drawing the hair, though, was probably the biggest revelation for me – until that point I hadn’t realised HOW MUCH I had actually improved. Not only did the result look so much better and way more realistic, it also took me a rather small amount of time. I haven’t stopped the time but I think it didn’t take me much longer than 3 hours to draw all of Tarja’s hair (and it’s a loooot of hair…honestly, half of the picture consists of hair only). The rest of the portrait was done in literally no time – the shirt’s just plain black and therefore pretty uncomplicated to draw and the necklace wasn’t too much work either. Last but not least I corrected a few shadings and there I was.

Phew. What a massive difference. Directly comparing the 2014 and the 2019 drawing to each other makes me quite cheerful and, well…proud. It’s amazing how much I was able to improve just by practising and gaining more experience. No one taught me this, I achieved it all myself and I think it’s a great deal. If you’re at the beginning of being an artist yourself: don’t stop to believe in yourself and keep on drawing. You will get better with each and every artwork, although it might be hard at some points. But it’s worth it and if you look back to what was five years ago (or one year, or ten, it doesn’t matter) you can see what you’ve managed to achieve already. I highly recommend taking a look back from time to time, it might give you some fresh motivation for the way that still lies ahead of you. Because we all never stop learning. I’m curious what the next five years will bring for myself and how much I will learn. Let’s face it, I’m ready.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils (4B, 5B, 6B)

Time: approx. 7 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing: ©Universal

2019, Portraits

The Tuomas Holopainen Project

Miss Escapist

Now that I‘ve finally finished the Tuomas Holopainen card design, I can write a blog-post about the process of creating both – the Tuomas drawing itself and the card. I could have written something about the drawing before but as the two belong together, it just made sense for me to wait with this a little longer.

It all started with the idea of creating a new metal king card – for Tuomas. As I haven’t had any proper drawing to use for it, I decided it would be best to do a completely new drawing. I had found my reference photo quite quickly and my first intention was to start drawing with a ballpoint pen (as that had worked out for the cards quite well in the past). I started drawing Tuomas but stopped doing so somewhere in the middle of the process as it just didn’t look right in my eyes. So, I started all over again, this time with pencils. Suddenly, the drawing process got much smoother and I was way more satisfied with what I was creating there.

After having finished drawing Tuomas (which was pretty easy going after I had made the decision to use pencils instead of a ballpoint pen), I first intended to immediately start with designing the card. But as I liked the finished portrait so much, I wanted to “complete” it with a proper background. Instead of doing a realistic background drawn with pencils, I had the idea of adding something dreamier. I got out my acrylic colours and a separate sheet of paper and painted it in a bluish tone. I added sprinkles of white colour to give it a galaxy sort of look. Then, I used a gel pen to write the titles of some Nightwish songs on top of it all. Last but not least I cut out the Tuomas drawing and glued it onto the newly created “Nightwish galaxy” and done was the Tuomas Holopainen portrait.

I was pretty satisfied with the finished portrait and therefore didn’t really dare touching it again to create the card. Also, I was lacking inspiration and so it took me quite some time to get back to it. I started doing the design two or three times but stopped again because I didn’t like the result. One day at work I finally had the sparkling idea and couldn’t wait to transform it into a card as soon as I got back home. This time, the creation process only took a few hours as I already had the idea set in my mind. First, I edited the scan of Tuomas’ portrait into the required symmetrical form and added it to a blanc card. Next, I drew the pendulum symbol and the stardust using Autodesk Sketchbook. I changed their colour quite often, finally ending up with a purple tone that seemed to fit quite well. The last thing to add on top were the music notes and after a bit of finetuning and rearranging the card was done as well.

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils, acrylic colours, white gel pen, Autodesk Sketchbook, GIMP

Time: approx. 12 hours

2014, Other Artworks

A Random Falcon Sketch

Miss Escapist

“The age I learned to fly
And took a step outside”

Nightwish – Dark Chest of Wonders

There’s not too much that I can say about this drawing as it was a rather spontaneous sketch. I wanted to practice drawing animals and as I’ve always had a fable for birds I ended up scrolling through Google to look at different images of flying falcons. Then I got out my sketchbook and started drawing. What you can see above is the result of that study.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 1 hour