“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
“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
“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
As a big fan of Floor Jansen, I also follow all her projects aside from Nightwish. One of those projects is “Northward” where she created some nice hard rock together with Jorn Viggo Lofstad. I liked the music even more than I had expected myself to do and on a grey and rainy afternoon (while listening to Northward, of course) the beginning of this drawing was made. I started with a rough pencil sketch and then used a ballpoint pen for the rest of the drawing. I drew Floor first, followed by Viggo. In the beginning I didn’t really like the drawing but I kept on working on it and added details and shadings where necessary. Since my last ballpoint pen portrait, I had definitely managed to improve my skills and in the end the shading turned out to be quite smooth (at least for a ballpoint pen). I finished the portrait during my lunch break at university the next day by adding the trees. The drawing was quite successful after uploading it to social media, Northward saw and reposted it on all of their social media channels and I even had a private chat about that drawing with whomever is managing the Northward Instagram account
Paper size: A4
Materials: ballpoint pen
Time: approx. 9 hours
Reference photo used for the drawing: album cover of “Northward”
“One for all All for one We are strong We are one”
Arch Enemy – Nemesis
The idea for this portrait was actually suggested to me by one of my Instagram followers and I liked it so much that I just had to draw it immediately. That idea was to merge the faces of Floor Jansen and Alissa White-Gluz in one portrait. I spent quite some time searching for good reference photos as the angles of the pictures had to be the same so that I could do a proper face merge. Luckily, I found two pictures that went together perfectly and was able to start drawing. At first, I wanted to do a regular pencil portrait but then I changed my mind and went with a ballpoint pen instead. I started off with Alissa’s half and then went over to drawing Floor. During the process I always had to cover the other half of the face because it was way too confusing to see a completely different face there. I tended to bring trademarks of Alissa’s face into Floor’s and the other way around so covering was the best that I could do. The first time that I had a closer look at the entire face merge wasn’t before the portrait was finished and I think it looks cool and confusing at the same time.
Paper size: A4
Materials: ballpoint pen
Time: approx. 8 hours
Reference photos used for the drawing were taken by: Fradellafra Fotografie (Alissa’s photo) & Steve Brown (Floor’s photo)
“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
“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
“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
“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
“I’m stronger than I ever knew I’m strong because of you”
In This Moment – Roots
As doing a portrait with a ballpoint pen had worked out once already, I decided it was time to give that tool a second try. This time I picked a photo of Maria Brink as a reference – it was about time to draw her, I had never done so before. Most of her outfit is just black so I drew those parts first. Then I went on with drawing the face and after that her hair. Then I did a rough sketch of her crownlike headpiece with the ballpoint pen and added a bit of colour to it with a golden gel marker. Finally, I added a decorative circle in the background and did the writing
Paper size: A4
Materials: ballpoint pen
Time: approx. 3 hours
Reference photo used for the drawing was taken by: Jeremy Saffer
Miss Escapist Art 