Tag: Pencilportrait

2018, Portraits

A New Powerwolf Portrait

Miss Escapist

“We are the sword we tame, the fire, the flame. We hail the lord, we fear no rebel, no pain.”

Powerwolf – Venom of Venus

When Powerwolf announced their new album “The Sacrament of Sin” and, additionally to that, released fantastic new photos of the band members, they literally left me without any choice. I just had to draw them again. This time I wanted to approach the “band portrait thing” from another angle, though. Instead of taking a photo of the entire band as a reference and copying it 1:1, I came up with a design that combined the 5 separate portraits in one artwork. I did a rough layout design on my PC first before I transferred that idea to paper. This time I was smart enough to actually start at the left side of the picture and so the first one to draw was Falk Maria, followed by Charles. Atilla, Matthew and Roel followed after that. For this portrait I spent a lot of time with trying to get all the different shades correct, making them look smooth and edgy at the same time. I really wanted to capture the essence of Powerwolf in that drawing, more than I had done in my previous portrait of them. Certainly, one of the artwork’s highlights is the gold paint on their clothes as it really stands out from the pencil drawing. I used two layers of paint to get the right intensity of gold. I made the bottom of the drawing entirely black, apart from the writing, as I hoped for a chance of getting the drawing signed by Powerwolf one day – I imagined them signing with a golden pen on that black area. Yes, I’d definitely like that.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils, gold paint

Time: approx. 24 hours

Reference photos used for the drawing: taken from the official Powerwolf website

2018, Portraits

Cristina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil

Miss Escapist

“I forgive the ones who hurt me
But I’ll not forget your name”

Lacuna Coil – I Forgive (But I Won’t Forget Your Name)

It has been quite some time since I last drew a face-only portrait and I felt like going back to that for a change. I also had a reference in mind already – a photo of the lovely Lacuna Coil front lady Cristina Scabbia, whom I had never drawn before. When I draw a face portrait, I have a relatively fix pattern of how I work – I always start with the eyes, then do the shadings around them and go up to the forehead after that. When done with the forehead I continue with working on the nose before I give the rest of the face its shading. The final thing for me to do is drawing the lips. When I was satisfied with how her face looked like I started to work on her hair. This time, I wanted to try a new technique and see how it works out. Therefore, I used a thin metal item to “draw” the hair – only that what I drew wasn’t visible, I softly indented it into the paper. That was supposed to be my hair texture. Then I used a pencil to shade the hair areas and finally I drew single strings of hair darker than the rest. I was surprised by how good this method actually worked out and it wasn’t even much of an effort. In fact, it made drawing hair quicker and easier. Done with her hair, I moved on to drawing the background – which was quite easy as it’s just simple black. Now I only needed to work on the hands and her rings. I didn’t really manage to make the left ring look good but apart from that I absolutely loved how the portrait turned out.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 20 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Jeremy Saffer

2018, Portraits

Tomi Joutsen of Amorphis

Miss Escapist

“Come before the winter’s gale
before the frost and snow
take what I will give you
Accept my sacrifice”

Amorphis – Sacrifice

Though it might sometimes appear as if Nightwish are the only Finnish band that I listen to, that’s not true. There’s a variety of great bands from Finland that I highly enjoy – and Amorphis is one of them. Their melodic and melancholic music just got better and better through the years and the newly released “Queen of Time” certainly didn’t change my mind on that. On the contrary, it made me want to draw Tomi Joutsen, the singer of Amorphis. I ended up choosing a photo from one of their concerts as a reference as it just seemed to have the right vibe to it. Tomi’s face and hair were done quickly, what took me the longest to draw were his tattoos and the logo on his shirt. All in all, it was a quick portrait, though. A few weeks after finishing it, I decided that the portrait could use some background and so I added a dark shade of grey and black to complete the picture.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 8 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Lina Glasir

2018, Portraits

Marco Hietala of Nightwish

Miss Escapist

“He sets the sails one last time
Saying farewell to the world”

Nightwish – The Islander

After having drawn Nightwish ladies for so long it was just about time to finally give someone else a portrait, too. Nightwish’s very own master of bass, crazy good vocals and stupid jokes: Marco Hietala. Seriously – who doesn’t like Marco? I have always been afraid of drawing him because I know that I suck when it comes to drawing light / white hair. And he has a lot of that. I really wanted to draw him nevertheless and so I decided that I needed to get over that hesitation. I started with drawing Marco’s face as that was a more familiar thing to do before I faced my “fear” and began to work on the hair. I struggled a lot while doing so and though it ended up looking okay in the end, I still wasn’t really satisfied. Because of that it took me some time to regain my motivation for finishing the portrait. In the end, I managed to do so though and completed my work on Marco and the background.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 15 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Markku Hyttinen

2018, Other Artworks

Mermay 2018

Miss Escapist

Mermay – what the heck is that supposed to be? and wasn’t Inktober already enough? Apparently, it wasn’t as another drawing challenge had caught my eye. It’s basically like Inktober – 31 days, 31 prompts, 31 drawings – but this time they were all about mermaids and not about the medium ink. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do a lot of drawings for Mermay because my calendar was already stuffed for May. But I wanted to give things a try anyway and I had a few very special mermaids in mind. My basic idea was to combine drawing portraits of my favourite musicians and make just give them some fins. And that’s exactly what I did.

Alissa White-Gluz

Arch Enemy

Simone Simons

Epica

Christopher Bowes

Alestorm

Shagrath

Dimmu Borgir

Paper size: A4

Materials: blacklead pencil, chalk pastels

Time: approx. 60 minutes per drawing

2018, Portraits

Arch Enemy The Second

Miss Escapist

“Always keep on fighting my friend. There’s a reason to believe.”

Arch Enemy – Reason To Believe

Question 1: Have I already drawn Arch Enemy before? Yes. Question 2: Are there a ton of other bands whom I still need to draw? Yes. So the most logical thing would’ve been to just draw any other band, but nope. I ended up drawing Arch Enemy again. But I had a good excuse: I had a VIP ticket for their concert, so I’d be able to get another drawing signed there. A drawing that I didn’t even have yet. But there were still 3 weeks left to draw another band portrait – and that’s exactly what I did. This time I drew Alissa first and especially the details on her shirt took me a while to finish them. I continued drawing on Alissa’s right side, adding Michael and then Sharlee to the picture (I have this bad habit of starting somewhere in the centre or even on the right side of the picture, which leaves me working from right to left. As a right-handed person that’s kinda stupid but I’m always doing it again). Then I added Daniel and Jeff. At first, I left Daniels arm empty because I only had three days left until the concert and I wasn’t sure if I’d manage to finish the entire drawing in time. And I felt like drawing the background was a bit more important at that point as that would be the place where the signatures go. Luckily, I managed to finish the entire drawing in time – WITH Daniels tattoos.

Paper size: A3

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 14 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Katja Kuhl

2017, Portraits

Elize Ryd of Amaranthe

Miss Escapist

“I am the fuel to set you free
I am your destiny”

Amaranthe – Hunger

With October coming up it was time to draw another metal lady – Elize Ryd from Amaranthe. As her birthday is in the middle of October it seemed to be the perfect time to draw a portrait of her. Finding reference photos wasn’t very difficult but choosing one was. When I had finally decided, I started with sketching and shading Elize’s face. I worked from top to bottom in this portrait, starting with the head, then going down to the shoulders, her dress, the arm and finally her corset (or whatever it is). The very last and final thing to draw were all the tiny sequins on her dress, that took me quite some time to draw but also gave the portrait it’s final touch. I left the background empty because I didn’t really know how to fill it at that time but I promised myself that I’d complete the drawing one day.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 11 hours

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

2017, Portraits

Arch Enemy

Miss Escapist

“Feel the strength rise from within. If you really want it the world is yours.”

Arch Enemy – The World Is Yours

A few weeks before the release of “Will To Power” Arch Enemy announced a signing session in my home town. I was super excited about this because I saw a chance to show Alissa the drawings that I had made of her in person. And to get them signed, of course. However, I felt like it would’ve been a bit unfair to show up with a bunch of Alissa drawings without having a single drawing dedicated to the entire band. I mean, I love Alissa but I also love Arch Enemy as a band and I’m really into their music. So they deserved a band portrait anyways. I picked a picture from a promo shoot for their upcoming album as a reference and started drawing. First, I drew Michael, followed my Jeff. While Michael was done quite quickly, drawing Jeff consumed a bit more time (I’m not good when it comes to drawing light hair). I continued working on Sharlee and Daniel (whose tattoos took me ages and required a lot of patience) before I finally started drawing the lady in the centre. Luckily, I already had a lot of experience with drawing Alissa and so I didn’t struggle with depicting her. As a final touch, I decided to draw the background as well. After that, I was done with the portrait and all ready to get it signed by Arch Enemy.

Paper size: A3

Materials: Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 15 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing has been taken by: Katja Kuhl

2017, Portraits

Alissa White-Gluz – But This Time In Colour

Miss Escapist

“No progress comes from pleasure. We smile in ignorance and learn in pain”

Arch Enemy – Avalanche

Who would be qualified better for another coloured portrait than the one and only Alissa White-Gluz? And as I had a pencil in just the right shade of blue, it wasn’t that much of a question anymore. I had a picture of her in mind that I had wanted to draw for quite a long time, so I jumped right into it. First, I did a rough sketch with a blacklead pencil and then I started to fill everything with colours. Shading the skin went a bit better this time and when I was done with it I moved on to the part I had been looking forward to the most: her hair, of course. I wanted it to be the catchy highlight of the portrait and i put a lot of effort into getting the colours and the texture right. The last thing to draw was her shirt, which didn’t consume a lot of time as it just consists of black and white. I ended up very happy with the result and when I uploaded it to Instagram I even received a comment by Alissa herself, telling me that the drawing looks awesome and that she thinks I’m really talented. Yay. đŸ™‚

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell coloured pencils

Time: approx. 8 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Jeremy Saffer

2017, Portraits

Maisie Williams

Miss Escapist

“I’m going to kill the queen.”

Arya Stark (Game of Thrones)

What’s better than one Game of Thrones inspired artwork? Two Game of Thrones inspired artworks! Once again, I had difficulties deciding, so I ended up picking a character randomly – Arya Stark. I wasn’t really able to find a reference picture of Arya that convinced me, though, so I searched for pictures of Maisie Williams instead. Close enough, I thought. For this portrait I wanted to try something new and draw an entirely coloured portrait. Luckily, I had the right set of colours at hand, so I started drawing immediately. During the drawing process I had some difficulties with shading – I usually draw with very soft pencils and the coloured pencils that I used for this one were a lot harder. I really struggled with getting depth into her face and make the entire thing look three-dimensional. Nevertheless, the result looks kinda like Maisie, so I’ll stop complaining. Apart from the shading I was rather satisfied with how the portrait turned out and decided to do another coloured portrait soon.

Paper size: A4

Materials: Faber Castell coloured pencils

Time: approx. 8 hours