First of all: this is *old.* (in the timeline of my life as an artist, that is). If I were to do a version today it would be a lot more polished and detailed.

A number of years back, well before the release of Ghost Reveries, Opeth held a contest for their fans. They wanted submissions of a drawn album cover in the same vein of Rainbow's 'Long Live Rock and Roll' [link].

Based on the submissions they would choose the next person to do a drawing of the band to go in the album art for Ghost Reveries.

I designed my album cover to follow their guidelines, but wanted to put my own spin on it. Thus the tree going up the center, forming Opeth's logo of the scrollwork 'O' in the branches and the tree dissolving into a sketch at the bottom. There's been quite some turnover in band members since then, but these were the four guys we all know and love in the band at the time (Akerfeldt, Lindgren, Lopez and Mendez). Their faces are drawn with photo references but not directly copied from any particular picture.

Needless to say, they didn't choose me to draw their album art. I'm not particularly proud of this piece, but it is the only serious pencil drawing I did in about 7 or 8 years until I began drawing again full-time recently, so I'm pretty proud that I even completed it on time to submit it for the contest.

Although I'm really a fan of their older stuff, this is still my favorite band.