Tag: Pencilportrait

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

Sabaton – 20 Years

Miss Escapist

“Where is this greatness I’ve been told? This is the lies that we been sold.”

Sabaton – Great War

This project is one of the bigger ones that I did this year so far. I’ve had some plans concerning a Sabaton drawing for quite some time and with the release of their new album „The Great War“ and their special anniversary show at Wacken coming up, I felt like it was finally time to start drawing. I wanted the artwork to be connected to both – Sabaton and Wacken – as I had my ticket for Wacken and was definitely planning to see their show. First, I wanted the band portrait to be based on live photos of the band playing but as I couldn’t find suitable references I decided to go with “standard promo pictures” instead. The ones that I found on Sabaton’s website were exactly what I had been looking for and so I started to arrange the photos of the single band members until I had a nice group constellation. The next part was a lengthy but relatively easy-going procedure: pencil portrait time! For the background, I used acrylic colours and painted another sheet of paper with them. To bring together portrait and background, I cut out the guys and carefully glued them onto the background which was the most stressful part of this artwork – at least emotionally – as I was terribly afraid of ruining the portrait by making a mistake while cutting. It all came to a good end, though, and you can barely see the cuts at all. For Wacken, I got my drawing printed on a large flag. I took the flag with me and we hissed it in our camp for the entire seven days of the festival.

I recorded almost the entire drawing process and made time-lapse videos that I uploaded to my YouTube channel, so if you’re interested in seeing how I worked feel free to head over there (the channel is called “Miss Escapist Art”, not much of a surprise, I know…).

Paper size: A3

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils, acrylic colors

Time: approx. 20 hours

Reference photos used for the drawing: taken from Sabaton’s official website

2019, Portraits

Sansa Stark (Game of Thrones)

Miss Escapist

“No one can protect me. No one can protect anyone.”

Sansa Stark – Game of Thrones

With the last and final season of Game of Thrones coming up it was about time to dedicate another portrait to this series. I had wanted to draw Sansa Stark for quite a while – despite the fact that I didn’t really like her in the beginning, she grew to be one of my favourite characters. I remembered a picture of her that I had seen a few weeks ago and that would make a wonderful reference. After I had found that picture again, I started drawing right away. First, I drew Sansa’s eyes, then I shaded the skin, slowly working out her nose and mouth. After I was done with that, I continued with drawing her hair. Once again, I used the metallic tip of my mechanical pencil to “indent” hair structure into the paper before I started drawing over it with a regular pencil. This method had worked out very well for me on the Cristina Scabbia portrait and it also worked out here. The hair structure looks way more realistic and detailed. I continued with drawing the background, before I started working on the fur.

I managed to finish the portrait in a surprisingly short amount of time, the complete drawing process only took me about 8 hours – I started on a Friday afternoon and finished it on Sunday. Just in time for the new GoT season…

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 8 hours

2019, Portraits

Elize Ryd of Amaranthe 2.0

Miss Escapist

“And you can light the dark all by your own. So let us show the world our love is strong”

Amaranthe – Amaranthine

This one is a rather old portrait that I drew back in 2017. I never drew a background for this picture but always promised myself that I’d come back to doing so one day. That day happend to come two years later, when I finally felt like I had an idea on how to approach things. The Anders Fridén portrait had given me the final inspiration that I needed. So I took a proper picture of the old drawing and once again used my tablet to give it the final touch. I tried a lot of different colours for the logo, switching them back and forth, until I was finally happy with the result.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils, Autodesk Sketchbook

Time: approx. 12 hours (1 hour for the digital “upgrade”)

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

2019, Portraits

Anders Fridén of In Flames

Miss Escapist

“So burn, burn, burn, the world needs to see with open eyes, let the flames be seen far and wide”

In Flames – Burn

What began as a classical pencil portrait started to become a mixed media piece in the end. I drew Anders Fridén with my pencils and the progress went without major struggles. When I had finished drawing Anders I felt like the picture could use a colourful splash in the background. As I wasn’t so sure about this approach though, I decided to leave the original untouched. So I scanned it and added the In Flames logo digitally – and ended up very happy with the final result.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils, Autodesk Sketchbook

Time: approx. 12 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Gina Wetzler

2019, Portraits

It’s Khal Drogo – Or Not?

Miss Escapist

“A Khal does not need a chair to sit upon. He only needs a horse.”

Khal Drogo – Game of Thrones

If there’s one sort of art that I’ve never done myself but that I find highly fascinating, it’s cosplaying. The magic that some cosplayers create with their costumes and make-up-skills never cease to amaze me. One of my favourite cosplayers is Maul Cosplay (aka Ben Metzner aka Geralt of Rivia aka Khal Drogo aka …) – not only for his freaking amazing works but also because he seems to be such a nice and down-to-earth guy. During one of his Instagram livestreams I asked him for advice because I wanted to draw one of his cosplays and wasn’t sure which one to pick. He picked up my question and told me to do a drawing of his Khal Drogo cosplay that he did a few years ago. And so I did. Actually, it was a great choice because I love Game of Thrones. I chose a reference photo of Ben in full costume and started drawing right away. I began with his face, the shoulders and his arm before I went on to drawing the hair. The greatest challenge in this drawing was probably drawing the clothes as especially the belt features a lot of tiny details that required a lot of attention.

After finishing and uploading the drawing I received some quite positive feedback from Ben and also from EosAndy, the photographer, who had taken the photo I used as a reference. Although I don’t draw because of this attention and positive feedback, it’s still always nice when the depicted person sees and likes my work.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 11 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: EosAndy

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