The Shadow Theory

“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

“I am all you ever wanted
I’m a new dimension”

Kamelot – Phantom Divine

A few weeks before releasing “The Shadow Theory” Kamelot announced an artwork contest: The person who did the best artwork based on their new album cover would get the chance to meet with the band before one of their shows on their upcoming world tour. Of course, Kamelot didn’t need to tell me that twice and I immediately decided I was in for the challenge. I did not feel like changing lot in the album artwork itself as it was already amazing – instead I just wanted to bring my own artistical style to it. First, I did the basic shading for the background with acrylic colours, then I continued with adding the details to it. I thought it might be a nice contrast to the rest of the painting, to draw the woman in the centre with blacklead pencils instead of using acrylic colours, too. So I started drawing her with my pencils but I soon came to realise that the paper wasn’t really suitable for pencil works. She just didn’t look good at all but I didn’t want to throw the rest of the drawing away and so I came up with an alternative. I got out the paper that I usually use for pencil drawings and started drawing again. After I was done with that, I cut out the figure and glued it on top of my earlier attempt and – voila – done was my entry for the contest. End of the story is that I never heard anything from that contest again – either I didn’t win and they only informed the winner(s) privately. Or they completely forgot about the contest. I don’t know but I like my artwork anyway.

Paper size: A4

Materials: acrylic colours, Faber Castell blacklead pencils

Time: approx. 8 hours

Reference photo used for the drawing: album cover for “The Shadow Theory”

Tag: The Shadow Theory

Tommy Karevik of Kamelot